Member Profile

Joan Chahenza is a renewable energy finance and policy professional and has over a decade of  experience in both grid and off-grid renewable energy currently working as an independent consultant, she recently worked for Abt Global and was incharge  of HETA a USAID/ Power Africa program with the mandate of electrifying and digitally connecting 10,000 health facilities in sub Saharan Africa through the adoption of suitable business models that  crowd in and private sector capital.

She also worked as the Director, Energy Access Financial Advisory at the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA), where she led AMDA’s financial advocacy work on tariffs, rollout of smart subsidies and guarantee products that will crowd in large-scale funding to the minigrid sector in Africa. She was also the Chief Financial Analyst at KenGen and has experience in tariff setting and power purchase agreement negotiations of large-scale, grid-connected power.

She is a top 40 Under 40 Kenyan Women 2021, Africa Power and Energy Elite in the 2021, Fellow of the Future Energy Leader at the World Energy Council in 2020, a Young African Leader Initiative (YALI) Power Africa, Women in Africa Power 2019 fellow and a mentor for the Global Women’s network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) and a board member of the Energy Society of Kenya, the World Energy Council Kenya Chapter.

She has a Master of Science in Finance from the University of Nairobi and  Masters in Energy policy at the University of Sussex.