Asset Deployment VS Systems Design

Clean energy is increasingly positioned as an investment strategy for funders focused on women’s economic empowerment. A new synthesis of more than 115 studies, produced by Caribou delivered in partnership with Value for Women, with support from the Shell Foundation, FCDO, and Gates Foundation, shows that, across asset types, geographies, and women’s diverse social and economic roles, clean energy assets consistently generate measurable returns for women.

This finding should shape how investors prioritize capital in the growing gender–clean energy nexus. This is the second blog in the series. Read the first blog.

When it comes to investing in the gender–clean energy nexus, financial viability is necessary but not sufficient. In Caribou’s work on the gender-energy nexus, the gap is most apparent when assets that perform on paper fail to deliver meaningful returns for the women they are intended to benefit. Addressing this gap requires moving beyond asset deployment to the deliberate design of the systems in which those assets operate.

Consider Neema, a 32-year-old maize farmer in Southern Kenya who primarily relies on seasonal rains to water her crops. A simple 200W solar water pump could as much as double her income from farming, but the cost, US$500, is prohibitive against her current earnings. 

A pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) arrangement via her local savings group, requiring a 10% deposit and daily micro-payments via mobile money, could give her access to a solar pump for irrigation within a week. But the margins are razor-thin. The PAYGo financing costs Neema nearly 60% more than the upfront retail price over three years due to interest. In the early months, the net benefit to her farm is close to zero. She services payments from her existing income while waiting for the pump to prove itself. One bad harvest would end the arrangement before it delivered any returns.

If she can hold on for the first year and a half, Neema might start to see a dramatic increase in her crop yields and can start to save money, invest in other areas of her farm, or repay the pump ahead of schedule. 

I’ve seen variations of Neema’s situation across multiple markets. Women involved in smallholder agriculture across Africa and Asia disproportionately face this extreme combination of constraints. They perform the majority of agricultural labor, but they are far less likely to own land, have access to credit, or have decision-making authority over the use of assets at home or on the farm than men. It is this structural gap that can turn a financially viable asset into a precarious one.

The tension between the potential for transformation and the potential for harm is at the core of the gender–clean energy nexus and Caribou’s new report. In our analysis, underperformance stems from a fundamental mismatch between how clean energy assets are designed and what conditions are needed for women to benefit.

Across Caribou’s synthesis of the evidence, five enabling conditions consistently emerged as the factors that can determine whether a clean energy investment delivers for women: Agency, Relevance, Infrastructure, Skills, and Engagement (ARISE). ARISE is a practical framework for assessing those conditions before committing resources. Each factor represents an interdependent design decision; weakness in any one can limit or reverse gains from the others. Interventions that cannot demonstrate how they address all factors should expect weaker outcomes for women’s economic empowerment. This shifts the investor’s role from financing assets to designing the conditions under which those assets can perform.

ARISE is, in this sense, both a system design tool and a practical test: a quick diagnostic for mapping context, motivations, and enabling conditions before committing resources. It draws on several decades of convergent thinking, such as the diffusion of innovations (Rogers), effective use (Gurstein), the appropriate technology tradition, and systems thinking in aid (Ramalingam), all of which share the underlying intuition that technology’s uses and benefits can only be understood as products of complex, contingent factors, not on a whiteboard or spec sheet.

The case for investing in the gender–clean energy nexus is compelling, and the benefits for women can be substantial when design moves past asset deployment toward holistic system design. Investments that do not account for how women actually access, use, and benefit from assets, that don’t come with realistic financing terms for women, and that treat the ARISE conditions as optional add-ons are capping their own returns.

Neema’s story does not have a guaranteed ending. The solar pump works, and the second growing season is a viable possibility. The returns, if she reaches them, could allow her to invest in her children’s education and strengthen her position within the household as an economic contributor.

What remains uncertain is whether the pump is well matched to her crops, farm size, and water supply (Relevance); if she has the agronomic and financial skills to optimize what it produces and manage the new income stream (Skills); if the financing terms give her enough runway to reach that point (Infrastructure); whether she retains decision-making authority over the pump and the income it generates (Agency), and whether the market infrastructure exists to absorb what she produces (Engagement). None of these conditions is created by the technology itself. In other words, the success of the investment depends less on whether the asset works and more on whether the system around it does. 

This is the design challenge the sector has not yet solved at scale. The evidence base now exists to show what works, for which women, under which conditions. The ARISE framework gives investors and program designers a practical tool for assessing those conditions before committing capital. What the sector needs now are funders willing to apply that rigor from the start as the basis for investment.

Read the full report, produced with Value for Women and supported by Shell Foundation. Caribou works with funders, investors, and program designers navigating exactly these questions. If this includes you, we would love to hear from you. Get in touch with Elise.