The Future of Energy Conference (FEC) 2025 took place from August 26–27 2025in Accra, Ghana. It brought together participants from the continent within the government, business, civil society, academia, media and major policy influencers in the energy industry space. We reproduce below, the keynote address delivered by Suneeta Kaimal, President and Chief Executive of the Natural Resources Governance Institute
This year’s theme, “Financing Africa’s Energy Future: Unlocking Investments for Energy Access and Economic Transformation,” responds to the enduring challenges of energy poverty. Over 600 million Africans lack electricity and nearly a billion rely on traditional biomass for cooking.
Last month, at the fourth Financing for Development Conference in Seville, Kenya helped drive the launch of a bold new coalition, joined by Benin, Sierra Leone, Somalia and others. Together, they committed to taxing premium air travel to raise new, additional, and predictable flows of public finance for sustainable development.
If implemented globally, this measure alone could raise more than US$80 billion in revenue not loans or aid every year. To put this in perspective: the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that achieving universal access to modern energy in Africa requires only US$25 billion each year.
At first glance, this is just another tax. But it is far more significant. It represents the kind of financial innovation that African leaders can replicate, scale up, and channel to unlock energy access and economic transformations for Africa.
The challenge of this moment
Let me step back for a moment to explain “why” we need such innovation now, more than ever.
US$500 billion, along with related infrastructure spending, is the estimated cost for sub-Saharan Africa to close the energy poverty gap and transition its energy system to a sustainable basis. $500billion. That is a stunning figure.
By contrast, in 2023, financing for clean and renewable energy in all developing countries, not just sub-Saharan Africa, reached only US$22 billion. Think about that. US$500 billion needed for sub-Saharan Africa alone, US$22 billion available for all developing countries.
Just a year ago, many still believed that bridging this massive financing gap might be achieved through “blended finance”. Blended finance is the idea that we use relatively small amounts of public finance to de-risk and leverage much larger flows of private investment. That was how the EU and the US managed to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.
The promise of this “billions to trillions” narrative was that if African governments covered the risks and offered something like 9 percent yields on bonds intended to drive energy transition investments, then private investors would come flooding in. Multiplying public money by ten, a hundred, even a thousand times.
But actual results show that the “billions to trillions” idea is an illusion. The Blended Finance Task Force found that, rather than multipliers of ten, 100, or 1,000, the results are closer to 0.3, which means that every dollar in public money brings only 30 cents in private finance.
If you combine that reality with plummeting international development assistance levels and the constant chaos of tariff wars, one thing is clear: the rules of this game will not address Africa’s needs to finance energy access and sustainable development.
So, the challenge Ben Boakye, the Executive Director of ACEP, put to us yesterday is the right one: how do we innovate to meet the rightful expectations and aspirations for energy access of the next generation.
Building on NRGI’s work with partners in government, and in civil society around the world, I’ll share some insights into what must change to enable lasting, innovative financing solutions.
Strategic, inclusive just energy transitions
Successful financing starts with a strategic, inclusive vision for just energy transitions. There is no single path for defining the energy and economic futures of countries. We need context-specific solutions that are aligned with the country’s development ambitions and reflect the voices and needs of different populations.
Here in Ghana and in Nigeria, we have collaborated with partners to launch national dialogues, ensuring that energy transition plans align with public priorities. In Ghana’s oil-producing regions, we have engaged with communities to amplify the concerns of fisher-folk, women, and youth.
In Senegal, we trained civil society partners to understand and engage with public consultations on the Just Energy Transition Partnership, and to raise concerns about energy access and equity.
Building such strategic, inclusive visions ensures that the financing that is raised is directed towards the needs and ambitions of the people and their national development plans.
Changing the color of money
The second change needed is the color of the money.
Even promising initiatives like Senegal’s Just Energy Transition Partnership risk pushing countries further into the debt trap. Of the financing pledged for the JETP, only 6.6 percent is in grants. More than 80 percent is structured as loans. Instead of creating fiscal space for investments in rural electrification or retraining workers, it risks adding pressure to unsustainable debt.
Governments across Africa spend nearly 17 percent of their revenues on debt service the highest of any developing region. Over half of Africans now live in countries that spend more on debt than on health or education.
New lending models are needed to mobilize private capital. But these must offer African nations fair interest rates that recognize their growth trajectories and avoid overburdening public budgets. They must also be paired with technical and technological support for renewables, addressing barriers to licensing and intellectual property.
Reinvigorating domestic resource mobilization
Finally, we must reinvigorate domestic resource mobilization, the primary engine of sustainable development financing.
Africa holds immense resources – including 30 percent of the world’s transition mineral reserves. African countries can leverage the global demand for minerals for strategic bargaining to move up the value chain, diversify their economies and increase public resources.
Take Zambia. They have attracted European support for a planned cobalt refinery and to facilitate investment in an electricity interconnector between Zambia and Tanzania. That will reduce the impact of increasing drought risks on their hydro capacity.
Value addition like this is not feasible in all countries and contexts, but such regional collaboration can overcome constraints such as scale, supply of inputs, and small downstream markets, and help unlock more benefits from the mining sectors. In doing so, countries can move concertedly up the value chain, increasing domestic financing for just energy transitions and advancing renewable technologies at home.
The opportunity is now
Strategic, inclusive just transitions. Changing the color of the money. Reinvigorating domestic resource mobilization. These are not small asks— they require long-term, sustained, and concerted focus. The influence of rich, consumer countries still limits the scale of financing and compromises sovereignty over energy and resources. And rich countries must not be allowed to abdicate their roles and responsibilities.
The UN climate regime has, for too long, been silent on the issue of minerals that are critical to delivering just transitions. The UN Secretary General himself said: “The race to net zero cannot trample over the poor.” As a member of the UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, I and many others pushed hard for principles and actions for a new mining paradigm to guide the renewables revolution toward justice.
The Seville coalition showed that African leaders are already bringing practical, innovative ideas to the table. They must now be resolute in forging their own paths as the aid paradigm crumbles. By bringing the political will and ambition to scale, replicate and channel innovative sources of finance to energy transition priorities, we can ensure that bold ideas lead to real progress and that real progress leads to economic and energy transformation for all Africans.
