Taking responsibility for Africa's sustainable development

In the week the World celebrated 30 years after Nelson Mandela was released from Prison, Open Africa Power convened 61 young African leaders in Cape Town for a weeklong training in electricity generation, distribution and regulation (Feb 10-14th 2020).

At the same time, South Africa continued to faced power cuts, and the President pledged (once again) to tackle the root cause of that problem: the failing state-owned electricity monopolist Eskom. During the State of the Nation speech, Ramaphosa recognized the fundamental need to change regulation, for example allowing cities to source electricity from independent power producers, and stimulating private investors to build more renewable energy projects that can help replace the stranded and carbon-intensive generation fleet of the country.

The link between energy and development thus continues to be central to Africa’s most industrialized nation, but even more so in other areas of the Continent, as 600 million Africans still do not have access to electricity.

And while Nelson Mandela didn’t speak often about energy, he did equate the need to political freedom to the need to ensure sustainable development:

African leaders in energy show up, and take responsibility

The #OpenAfricaPower journey included lessons on the state of the power sector in Africa and its challenges, presentations on technologies and innovation driven approaches, case study analysis of sustainability and shared value in the power sector, discussions on business development, legal, financial and regulatory issues.

But the most important element in the third edition of the program started by Enel Foundation in 2018 and hosted this year at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business was the comradery and the bonding of an exceptional talented Group of leaders.

Inspired by the values of Nelson Mandela, brilliantly evoked in the opening session by Sello Hatang, the CEO of Nelson Mandela Foundation, who also announced a partnership with Open Africa Power, the group showed great commitment to lead their life with a meaning, a purpose, and above all bearing great hope in the future of Africa.

I felt privileged to have testified their drive applied to examining the role of clean energy and resilient electricity distribution systems for Africa’s Sustainable development. The quality of ideas developed and discussed at the closing workshop focused on impact entrepreneurship makes me believe that this Group will leave a great legacy very soon.  

See below extract of an interview by Sello Hatang mentioning the partnership between Nelson Mandela Foundation and Enel Foundation for Open Africa Power.