CloudGreen

CloudGreen’s innovative platform addresses the following: Demand for affordable productive assets for settlement and urban women-led businesses; Startup risks; Lack of incentives to transition to clean energy; and Limited market access, especially to emerging digital markets.

To increase value addition, local CloudGreen hubs provide partnering mechanisms and tools to improve access to clean energy for refugees/hosts. CloudGreen assists women to transition to clean energy through the use of productive assets (solar dryers via Sparky Dryer and e-bikes via CloudGreen). Besides, financial services (via Fynixwave) are made available to refugees and host community women. With CloudGreen’s ordering/payment platforms (thinkIT CloudGreen), women in Kiryandongo and Kampala have access to ready markets to sell and transport agricultural products with the use of e-bikes.

Moreover, CloudGreen connects female refugees in Kiryandongo and Kampala with CloudGreen’s ready markets in Kampala through mobile technologies (i.e., application and ussd). CloudGreen also delivers training to refugee and host community women to ensure they can add value to the product (e.g. through solar drying and eco-friendly packaging) as well as to clean energy mobility solutions to deliver the product to the final consumers. For instance, trainings are given on financial inclusion (Fynixwave) via simplified information chuncks aimed at helping women cultivate a savings culture and to create credit scores for their business. Together, the clean energy tools and training help women to process, store and transport their products.

Update: During the implementation process, women are reporting that the financial literacy training from Fynixwave is helping women to work as a whole family unit to create family budgets and that it is leading to decreased domestic violence. The women also noted that training related to creating organic briquettes to use in the Sparky dryers has taught the women the value of organic briquettes. This has led the refugee women to use these briquettes for cooking instead of charcoal. Besides, refugee women noted that they appreciate that they were connected with market women in Bwyale town to expand market access. Additionally, refugee women expressed the need for smartphones for more efficient access to digital markets and for additional EVs (tuk-tuks) for transporting goods to market.