There is a phrase that has followed Africa through almost every global climate forum in recent years: “clean energy for people and planet.” And it sounds inclusive, moral and hard to argue against....
The most radical thing I have learned about Africa’s energy future did not come from a policy report, a donor strategy, or a conference panel. It came from watching young Africans refuse to wait. In...
I grew up counting nights by how dark they felt. In our part of Nigeria, as in most parts of Africa, darkness was not just the absence of light; it was a condition that shaped behaviour. When the sun...
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...
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...
On the morning the G20 released its South Africa Declaration, a senior official in Abuja joked quietly to a colleague: “Let me guess, they want us to be green, but not too green; use gas, but not too...
It is evening in Goma, and the sun has just slipped behind the jagged hills that surround this bustling city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. As darkness falls, the cityscape begins to...
"We used to deliver babies by candlelight. Now we have light, and we can save more lives." That was the quiet but powerful testimony of Ruth, a midwife in rural Kitui County, Kenya. Until 2021, her...
In a small farming village in northern Kenya, a quiet revolution is underway. A community that once relied on smoky kerosene lamps and long treks to distant markets now hums with activity late into...