Four things define Norah’s existence; family, women, youth, and clean energy. They are what she falls back to when other things are falling apart. And falling apart they have. Many times.
Norah remembers what set her soul on fire to start an NGO at first and later a limited company with great fondness. “I went on a job hunt and was asked if I could do the job since I am a girl,” Norah says. That was 2019, the same year she lost her mother and started her family without a job.
She moved to rural Makueni after the city stopped making sense and she saw the challenges farmers in Makindu faced with storing their farm produce. “I started an NGO to help farmers store their produce. We started by importing a solar-powered refrigerator from China that took two months to get here,” she says. That first project was a great failure and an important lesson in how not to do things. “The thing that failure teaches you is the alternative routes to success,” Norah says.
As a new parent in a rural setup, she could hardly access medical supplies for her child. This, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the persuasion she got from one of her mentors, led her to invent VacciBox, her solar-powered flagship product in medical engineering meant to store medical supplies.
"Failure does not mean your story is done. Do it again; success is always closer than we think."
The University of Nairobi graduate in mechanical engineering never stops learning. She is a YALI, Microgrid Academy, United Nations Institute of Training and Research, and Future Female Business School alumna. All of these, she says, have formed a power grid that led her to where she sits.
“I discovered earlier on in my career that, to succeed in my field, I have to work 10 times harder just because I am a woman. It is widely thought that I am not enough. Knowledge is therefore my superpower in overcoming this stereotype,” she says.
She wants to spearhead youth- and women-led innovation and manufacturing in the clean energy sector in Africa to foster climate resilience and sustainability. She wants to be alive in a day when Africa won’t be a dumping ground for near-obsolete technology from the West.
What has she had to lose to succeed? Fear! “I lead a team of passionate innovators who want to change the engineering landscape in Africa. To do that, we must train our focus on the goal. That begins where fear ends,” she says.
With all these on her plate, how does she strike a balance between work, innovation, and family? “I have come to believe there isn’t a balance in life. Life is one big disequilibrium. However, there are boundaries and limits. When you observe them, you learn what to do and when,” Norah says.
To the young woman engineer out there, she says, “Failure does not mean your story is done. Do it again; success is always closer than we think.”
– By Ndugu Abisai
