EWiEn Incubator Program

EWiEn has launched the first women youth, energy-based incubator program in Ethiopia (EWiEn incubator). The program is designed to address the energy access gap by making women change agents, through promoting innovation and women’s inclusiveness.

The EWiEn incubator is a project that aims to bring social, economic, and environmental impacts across the entire value chain of the renewable energy business, starting from generation to consumption of energy. Women entrepreneurs will be trained in critical industry skills to create innovations that are affordable, accessible, and user-friendly for households or commercial use.
The EWiEn incubator encourages women to develop start-up ideas related to; products, processes, technology, financial mechanisms, data services, and other aspects that can support and transform renewable energy accessibility specially solar energy in Ethiopia. The program will assist innovators by incubating their ideas through mentorship, technical, business, and skill development training, prototyping development, and networking to get their ideas off the ground and push it to the next level. This project is expected to generate ideas that will transform Ethiopia’s energy sector through the participation of young women.

Eligibility criteria

• Idea
  Business ideas should address a problem within the renewable energy sector specifically solar energy solutions.
• Team
  The founder/co-founder of the business must be female
• Commitment
  Must be willing to commit 6hr per month to the incubation program
• Target
  The business needs to bring an innovative idea that is targeted towards the community.
• Scalable
  The business idea needs to have the potential to be scalable.
• Financial
  The business idea should be financially viable.

Program details

The EWiEn incubator program is designed to help female-led energy startups develop their business to the next level through the planned training and coaching sessions in the program. The program includes various training tailored for business ideas in renewable energy specifically solar energy.

1. Entrepreneurship Training:

The objective of this training is to equip trainees with entrepreneurship skills that allow them to develop their business ideas and start businesses. This entrepreneurial training will allow women to start their own business by teaming up with other trainees in the team or outside of the incubation program.

The training will include:

• Introduction to entrepreneurship.
• Leadership/ team building.
• Market research.
• business model canvas.
• Financial Projection.
• Business plan writing.
• Brand positioning/ vision/ Mission.
• Social media presence/ Personal branding/ Logo Design.
• Pitch training.