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I’ve Watched Villages Wait for Decades. This Is What Climate Finance Should Fix First.
I still remember the first time I saw electricity reach a village.It was late in the 1990s, and I was a boy visiting my grandmother’s house in Cross River State, Nigeria. A single light bulb...
Can Development Banks Really Deliver Africa’s Energy Transition, Or Are They Still Lending Too Carefully?
If finance is the lifeblood of the energy transition, Africa’s arteries are still half-blocked. In 2024, the world’s multilateral development banks (MDBs) reported record climate commitments $137...
Why “Climate Money” Rarely Reaches the Villages And What I’ve Seen in the Gaps
Every year, the rains come and go. The villagers gather at the same broken borehole, filling buckets from puddles that the government once promised to replace with solar-powered pumps. Somewhere in...
Diesel Generators Are Costing Africa Billions and Distorting Power Systems
Across Lagos and beyond, diesel generators power daily life but at a huge cost, draining billions and distorting Africa’s power systems.
The Strength of African Communities Living Without Power
There is a sound I remember from my childhood, not the noise of generators or the crackle of candles, but the soft murmur of neighbours talking in the dark. Entire evenings lit only by moonlight or...
Africa’s Electricity Access Targets Are Failing: Here’s the Blueprint to Fix Them
There is a sentence repeated in nearly every African energy policy document: “universal access by 2030.” It is optimistic, visionary and mathematically impossible. With just five years to go, Africa...
What It Means to Grow Up Counting Generators Instead of Dreams
When I think about the childhoods many African children are living today, I am transported back to my own: a small house, a kerosene lantern that flickered more than it shone, and the low, constant...
Africa’s Energy Crisis Is Killing People. Here’s the Data Behind the Emergency
Some crises announce themselves loudly, while others unfold quietly, suffocating people long before the world names them. Africa’s energy crisis belongs to the latter. It is spoken of in terms of...
Who Really Benefits From Africa’s Transition Minerals? Winners, Losers, and the New Global Power Map
There is a growing conviction in global energy circles that Africa holds the keys to the world’s decarbonisation. The minerals essential to electric vehicles, battery storage, and renewable...
Africa Cannot Afford to Repeat the Mistakes of the Oil Era in the Critical Minerals Boom
There is a photograph I keep in my mind, a memory rather than an image. It is of a dusty road in the Niger Delta, the air thick with the smell of gas flaring in the distance. As a young boy, I...
Can Africa Really Lead the Global Battery Race? Here’s What It Will Take
For years, Africa has been described as a continent rich in minerals but poor in manufacturing. A place where the world mines, ships and profits, while local communities wait for trickle-down...
In Africa’s Mining Towns, I’ve Seen Wealth Leave and Dust Remain
I have walked through towns where the ground is rich, but the people are not. Places where the earth underneath your feet could power the world’s clean-energy future, yet the homes beside the road...