How Nkechi Okenwa Is Reimagining Renewable Energy and Women’s Leadership in Nigeria

Nkechi Okenwa walked into her office, moving instinctively toward the window and pulled the blinds open. Outside, the city was already in motion: cars weaving through traffic, traders arranging their stalls, generators humming faintly in the distance. She paused for a moment and smiled quietly to herself. For Nkechi, energy had never simply been about electricity. It was about movement, opportunity, and the power to transform lives.

Long before she stepped into a university lecture hall, Nkechi said, she had been fascinated by the way a single switch could completely change the atmosphere of a home. Growing up in Nigeria, she watched how electricity brought light into dark rooms and how access to power allowed communities and businesses to function.

“As a teenager choosing the course of study, I had to take on electrical electronics engineering as a course,” she recalls. “Though I knew it was a male-dominated call, because I never saw any female studying that course… that’s actually how this whole journey started.”

When she finally entered university, the reality of that gender gap became impossible to ignore. In a lecture hall of more than 220 engineering students, only 12 were women — barely five percent of the class. The imbalance was intimidating, but it also planted the seed for a bigger mission.

Nkechi Okenwa, CEO of Energy Excell Systems and Solutions, working on her laptop in her office at CITEC Estate by Jabi-Airport Road bypass, FCT Abuja, Nigeria on April, 1, 2026. Photo: Jerry Ogbe, bird story agency

“I said there has to be a way to, you know, get women…