The ‘Youth Energy Summit (YES!)’ is a convening hub to align entrepreneurs, students and early career professionals with the corporate and development communities. With a goal of reaching 100 million people across the African continent over the coming ten years through a network of solution providers, the programme is a combination of in-person and online learning and networking through the Beyond Privileged 365 Digital Platform, enabling participation by anyone, from anywhere on the African continent.
The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) is an alliance of philanthropy, governments in emerging and developed economies, and technology, policy, and financing partners. GEAPP’s common mission is to enable low and medium income countries (LMICs) shift to a clean energy, pro-growth model that accelerates universal energy access and inclusive economic growth while supporting the global community to meet critical climate goals during the next decade.
As an alliance, GEAPP aims to reduce 4 gigatons of future carbon emissions, expand clean energy access to one billion people, and enable 150 million new jobs. With philanthropic partners, IKEA Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Bezos Earth Fund, GEAPP works to build the enabling environment, capacity, and market conditions for private sector solutions, catalyse new business models through innovation and entrepreneurship, and deploy high-risk capital to encourage private sector solutions and assist just transition solutions.
“It has long been stated that Africa lacks bankable projects, so when we designed YES! we understood clearly from the MSMEs and entrepreneurs that the one thing which would have helped them succeed faster, would have been access to a network of advisors, investors and technology providers to help build out their business plans and access capital more efficiently.
Through the Africa Energy Forum, EnergyNet have been highly effective at building a global network of industry-leading stakeholders, the majority of whom have initiatives designed to support and develop local communities. However, some of those initiatives remain largely underutilised due to the resources required to establish networks and engage people in those programmes. YES! will act as that convening hub to communicate with 100,000,000 Africans over the next 10 years through a network of philanthropic organisations, mobile operators, universities, learning initiatives, community based networks and corporate partners.
By building an all-of-sector alliance to establish the world’s largest network of potential African energy developers, entrepreneurs and MSMEs, YES! will speed up the pace of energy access for millions more people across the continent, as well as promoting the expansion of established initiatives already working with thousands of people independently of the rest of the development community.
It is no longer helpful to state that 600 million Africans lack access to energy as a statistic of relevance, without addressing the fact that this number is only getting larger as population growth continues its war against energy access. And to give context to that statement, World Bank statistics have for a number of years forecasted that 25% of the world’s population, of which 50% of that 25% will be under 25 years of age, will live on the continent by 2050.
It is therefore time to look at this challenge through a different lens and focus directly on how Africa’s youths are empowered to increase the scale and pace of energy access, far beyond the current development model which operators in siloes and is often inaccessible to aspiring African entrepreneurs, leaving millions of people not only without electricity, but also without hope of change within their lifetimes. I’m grateful to GEAPP for their support as they also seek to tackle both climate change and job creations through their network of partners and investments.
The support of GEAPP is critical to the programme’s success, not only does it bring in critical investment to provide more travel grants and greater market penetration, it brings a year round partnership striving in harmony to put Africans at the heart of their own development needs, creating millions of community based jobs with carbon-smart technologies, not only improving the livelihoods of children, but also the planet.” Simon Gosling, EnergyNet
“GEAPP is thrilled to be joining as a foundational partner for the Youth Energy Summit,” says Joseph Nganga, GEAPP’s VP for Africa. “Young entrepreneurs are often excluded from all aspects of the energy transition value chain, and they face disproportionate barriers to educational opportunities, project finance, and decent jobs, particularly those in emerging and developing economies where access is compounded with additional development challenges. To meet ambitious global goals of hundreds of millions of green jobs by 2030, it is urgent that young people are trained and supported now to access opportunities and accelerate growth in the renewables sectors as they seek opportunities in the workforce. GEAPP looks forward to working with EnergyNet to unlock the abundant potential of young entrepreneurs who will lead the energy transition and realizing a more equal and sustainable world.”
The Youth Energy Summit in Nairobi this June will welcome nearly 1,000 entrepreneurs, MSMEs, Early Career Professionals, Educators and Students. T
