Moringa women: using solar energy to grow women’s incomes in rural Guinea

Moringa is a vitamin-rich tree that supports biodiversity and prevents soil erosion by keeping the earth full of nutrients. Its leaves provide a dietary supplement and offer over 300 medicinal benefits for many societies worldwide. For its many rumored health benefits, global demand for moringa is on the rise, as are its market prices. With support from UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality, the PREM organisation helped install solar polytunnel dryers in four localities of the Islands and trained local women’s cooperatives to use this renewable technology to scale moringa production on the Islands.In this video, Aissta Keita – president of the moringa women’s cooperative in Kapkin locality—discusses how learning to plant, grow, harvest, wash, dry and package new moringa products through PREM’s programme has created new economic opportunities and transformed the community’s outlook and care for the environment.This video is part of the knowledge initiative of UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality “Building Resilience in Fragility: Women’s Empowerment in Action” supported by the Government of Japan. For more information about the Fund, please visit www.unwomen.org/fge