International Women’s Day 2026 is centred on a simple but powerful idea: Giving to Gain. It celebrates women who step into broken systems, build solutions, and create value that multiplies. Few stories reflect that theme more clearly than Habiba Ali, Founder and CEO of Sosai Renewable Energies Company.
For nearly two decades, she has focused on one stubborn problem in Northern Nigeria: the lack of clean, reliable energy in rural communities. Where many saw darkness, she saw opportunity. Where families relied on kerosene lamps and open fires, she built solar-powered alternatives. Her work proves that when you give communities access to energy, you gain healthier homes, stronger businesses, and new economic pathways.
Read: RefinedNG Honors Diversity and Inclusion on International Women’s Day
The Energy Crisis She Refused to Ignore
In many rural communities across Northern Nigeria, energy once meant smoke-filled kitchens and dim kerosene lamps. Women cooked over open fires. Small businesses closed at sunset. Families spent hard-earned income on fuel that damaged their lungs and their budgets.
Habiba Ali understood that reality firsthand. Growing up, she helped her mother run a roadside food business and inhaled the same fumes that millions of women still endure daily. That experience stayed with her.
She entered the renewable energy space in 2005, co-founding the Developmental Association for Renewable Energies and serving as national coordinator. She worked on the Clean Development Mechanism Efficient Cook Stoves project, led solar lamp assembly and sales training programmes, and supported solar dryer initiatives that improved food preservation.
Those early years grounded her in both policy and practice. She saw the scale of the challenge but also the scale of possibility. Advocacy mattered, but access required something more sustainable. That realisation pushed her to build a commercial solution.
Building Climate Smart Villages with Sosai
In 2010, she launched Sosai Renewable Energies as a market-driven social enterprise. The goal was direct: deliver efficient, reliable and sustainable energy products to rural and peri-urban communities.
The company began with solar lamps and expanded into solar home systems, rooftop panels, 10kW microgrids for communities, solar dryers, water filters and integrated energy centres. At the heart of its model is the idea of “Climate Smart Villages”, communities powered by solar minigrids instead of diesel generators and kerosene.
Through a partnership with C-Quest LLC, Sosai also manages a nationwide programme for improved cookstoves, with over 60,000 installations to date.
The numbers tell a strong story. Sosai has delivered solar power to more than 4,000 rural customers. Small businesses using its systems have cut energy costs by half. Homes run cleaner. Clinics store vaccines more safely. Students study after sunset.
The global community has taken notice. Sosai’s work earned the Ashden Award, recognising practical climate solutions that improve lives. But beyond the award, the real impact sits in villages where energy no longer means smoke.
Women Powering the Power Shift
Habiba’s model goes further than technology. She builds people into the system.Through targeted training and partnerships, Sosai equips local women to become clean energy distributors and entrepreneurs. The Matan Arewan Sosai platform strengthens women’s capacity in production, sales, servicing and installation of renewable energy products across Northern Nigeria.
This approach shifts women from energy consumers to energy leaders. They earn income, support their families, and drive adoption in communities that trust them.
This is Giving to Gain in motion. Give women tools and training, and you gain thriving micro-businesses. Provide communities clean energy, and you gain better health outcomes. Give small enterprises affordable power, and you gain economic growth that lasts.
Beyond her company, Habiba serves as Vice President of the Renewable Energies Association of Nigeria and contributes to several clean cookstoves and energy networks. Her influence moves between boardrooms and rural markets, connecting policy to practice.
Read: Leading the Charge: 16 Women Turning Advocacy into Action
Leadership Backed by Discipline
Habiba Ali combines technical vision with financial discipline. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and a master’s degree in Banking and Finance. Her fellowships, including programmes with the Cherie Blair Foundation, GSBi, Vital Voices and the World Bank’s WomenX initiative, reflect a leader committed to growth and scale.
She has worked in renewable energy since 2005. That longevity matters. It signals consistency, not trend-chasing. While infrastructure gaps and financing challenges continue to slow Nigeria’s energy transition, her work shows what steady, community-focused leadership can achieve.
This International Women’s Day, her story reminds us that sustainable innovation does not arrive overnight. It builds, project by project, village by village.
This International Women’s Day, celebrate women who are building solutions that last.
Follow RefinedNG for more stories spotlighting African women driving innovation across energy, finance, technology and beyond. Share this feature and amplify the work of women reshaping Africa’s future, one bold solution at a time.