Senior Technical Advisor, USAID/Power Africa Healthcare Electrification and Telecommunications Alliance (HETA)
Joan Chahenza is a renewable energy finance professional at Abt Associates, tasked with providing technical advisory support on project delivery, financing, and the adoption of suitable business models that drive private sector participation in powering healthcare centers across the African continent using energy-as-a-service business models.
She has 10 years’ experience in both grid and off-grid renewable energy. Previously, she was 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 worked as Chief Financial Analyst at KenGen and has experience in tariff setting and power purchase agreement negotiations of large-scale, grid-connected power. She was listed as Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya in 2021 and was recognized as power and energy elite in 2021; she is also a Future Energy Leader at the World Energy Council.
She has a Master of Science in Finance from the University of Nairobi and is pursuing a Masters in Energy policy at the university of Sussex.