- Rebekah Shirley, the deputy director for Africa at the World Resources Institute (WRI), says that increasing energy access for Africans, 600 million of whom lack basic access to electricity, requires thinking about entire economies.
- In a conversation with Mongabay, Shirley notes that technological advances, especially for renewable energy, are no longer the hurdle they once were.
- Instead, bringing energy access to households, community services and industry will result from investment in manufacturing, commerce and industry that will support the expansion of universal household energy access, Shirley says.
- Mongabay spoke with Shirley in the lead-up to the 2025 U.N. climate conference, COP30, in Belém, Brazil.
The quest to bring energy to Africans who need it often centers on the relatable electrical needs that arise in the home: lighting, phone charging, and a connection to what’s going on in the broader world through a radio or a television. Indeed, 40% of the continent’s population — around 600 million people — don’t even have that basic level of access. Where power access does exist, it’s often not enough to support the more intensive needs of essential services such as schools, hospitals and water treatment facilities.
At the 2025 U.N. climate conference, COP30, in Belém, Brazil, running Nov. 10-21, ensuring a “just energy transition” in Africa and elsewhere that lack access has been a central topic of discussion. The overall rise in atmospheric carbon stems largely from the burning of fossil fuels, which has propelled the growth of wealthy countries’ economies. By contrast, people from less-industrialized parts of the world have contributed little to climate change, yet are often the first to face its impacts, whether from droughts, rising sea levels or more intense storms. And without ready access to electricity, they’re often — quite literally — left in the dark.
Key to facilitating a just transition for Africa will be greater investments in renewables to capitalize on the continent’s abundant wind, geothermal, hydro and solar resources, according to Rebekah Shirley, deputy director for Africa at the World Resources Institute (WRI). (Already, more than half of Africa’s energy consumption is met by renewable sources, such as solar and wind, as well as geothermal and hydroelectric power.) But achieving universal energy access requires thinking that will build up broader economies, not just provide household access, Shirley adds.
In a recent conversation with Mongabay’s John Cannon, she laid out a vision for bringing larger numbers of people access to more energy across Africa by investing in self-supporting economies that include manufacturing and industry. The aim, which Shirley says is sparking momentum with African leaders, is to drive access to electricity and energy in general in ways that are economically sustainable.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mongabay: In your view, where does the just energy transition in Africa stand right now?
Rebekah Shirley: I would start by saying the energy transition challenge in Africa is actually quite different from the decarbonization shift that we need to see [elsewhere]. It’s less this pivot away from fossil fuels, and more question of how do we rapidly expand power generation and distribution capacities in a way that is accessible, reliable, resilient — while staying the course of climate compatibility and not introducing heavy dependence on fossil fuels.
What we mean when we say “just transition” is something important to define. That conversation often gets pegged into a very specific hole in Africa, which focuses on the fact that 600 million-plus persons still don’t have access, and so we go very quickly down the route of household energy challenges.
Mongabay: Household access and high-intensity uses like cooking in particular seem like huge problems. How do we solve them?
Rebekah Shirley: The big challenge has been around the economics of the model that allows those things [such as cooking applications] to be commercially viable … The technology is no longer the issue. It’s the commercial viability of that technology. It’s incredibly hard to make something commercial when you’re serving the absolute bottom of the [economic] pyramid without subsidization.
Mongabay: The idea then is that to bring universal access, we have to think of the entire system and producing enough power for uses that go beyond the household. Is that right?
Rebekah Shirley: That’s the idea. [The focus] is shifting to solve for the productivity challenge [which creates] the solution for the household problem. By solving for the productivity challenge, the economics [of] providing and serving households are almost a byproduct. It becomes something that’s very easy for a service provider to deliver.
In fact, that’s how it works in the rest of the world: Households are subsidized in their use of electricity because of the fact that there are larger, anchor clients that are able to pay premiums for having access to electricity, and then it’s able to subsidize the cost of the household. It’s a whole-systems approach to thinking around how to turn the problem on its head and find a different entry point. Also, what this systems-wide thinking approach does is [create jobs], in addition to your renewable energy generation. You’re creating economic opportunity at a very local level.
How do you create incentives for international financiers to be attracted? There’s not one silver bullet. More solar on the continent [alone] isn’t a solution. Pumping more money alone isn’t a solution. We need this real systems-level thinking about the energy transition challenge.
Mongabay: To understand the “green” part of the transition, how renewable is energy on the continent right now in general?
Rebekah Shirley: The part that we often do overlook is that, where countries in Africa do have power, many of them are already relying on low-carbon technologies like geothermal power here in Kenya, hydropower in the rest of East Africa. Kenya already is producing 90% of its electricity from renewables. Even [in] West Africa, where the renewable shares are generally lower, countries like Ghana get 40% [of their electricity from] renewable sources. That’s compared to [the] U.S. [at roughly] 20%.
Mongabay: In your view, how do we channel that evolving technology to the people and sectors who need it most?
Rebekah Shirley: The fundamental challenge [is] how to make the delivery of energy services an economic exercise on the continent. We’re in a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Because you don’t have enough energy infrastructure to attract large industry, manufacturing and commerce, there is very little [energy] demand currently. The demand is latent. It’s hidden.
But … if you build the renewable energy first, it could take a decade for those types of clients and customers to be online to draw down your power. So, what do you do first? Do you create the demand base [from industry, manufacturing and commerce] that doesn’t have the power that it needs? Or do you invest in the power that will, for some time, not have the off-takers that it needs to pay for itself [and] where the upfront cost of renewables is not easily met? What that does is create a real challenge financially. It means it’s very difficult to build financial models that work for the continent.
We’re starting to see some breakthrough[s] right now in how we unlock barriers for private investors to come and engage on the continent. Take, for instance, what we do in Kenya as WRI. We work at the county level to design energy access plans for the county. Then the county can take a plan … and turn this into a detailed investment prospectus [to] bring investors to come and see what’s possible in [the] county. That has been very, very successful.
We start to create a value chain: Here is the energy supply or generation. Here is the technology that would off-take it, and here’s the end user. What we’re seeing is [that] if we present investors with that full value chain, it makes the world of difference, and the model starts to speak for itself.
Mongabay: How important is financing?
Rebekah Shirley: I think solving for that challenge of how to better create organic flows of finance into the continent and how to better leverage the available resources that [exist] in-continent is one of the biggest challenges we’re trying to unlock right now.
More resources need to be pumped into the sector. That said, the resources currently [being] pumped into the sector need to be used much, much better than they are. A challenge is how do we make sure that those concessional and low-interest resources that do flow to Africa for clean energy technology are being leveraged to their maximum potential?
Mongabay: On that point, how does the form in which financing arrives — for example, loans compared to grants — play a role?
Rebekah Shirley: We see a push toward international financial reforms that create more fiscal space for lower-income countries, in particular, a push toward changing the rules of the game. Part of the challenge is that public investments are very scarce because public finances are tied up in repaying debt. I think another big opportunity is starting to redress the entire international financial system that gives countries a little bit more flexibility to use public resources in ways that are aligned with their actual priorities, rather than just debt repayment.
Today, African countries owe over a quarter of their combined GDP in debt to external parties. Just to reemphasize the point, for countries in that situation, your very hard-earned and very scarce public sector resources are basically in a trade-off: Either you spend them to repay debts, or you spend them on public and social service priorities. That’s a very difficult trade-off to make when your back is against the wall.
Mongabay: It seems like you’re describing a shift in the conversation. Obviously, there’s this overriding moral issue that access to electricity should be a human right. But it’s also important to lay out a viable pathway for the investments required to occur — in particular, in renewable energy.
Rebekah Shirley: Absolutely. I think that sensibility is well recognized. I see a lot more conversation about the productive use of renewable energy.
We’re talking about circular agriculture, community-led forestry, landscape restoration, green manufacturing, green mobility and green infrastructure. The continental vision [gaining support from African leaders] is to build legitimate sectors of the economy that are based on sustainability, and that by building up these sectors you can simultaneously help to create thriving, shock-resistant economies. You build waves of jobs, you build resilience into the community, all while maintaining a path that is very low-carbon.
Our path today is low-carbon because there’s so little, but how do we maintain that low-carbon philosophy, even as we move forward?
Mongabay: What makes you hopeful that the transition can be successful?
Rebekah Shirley: The continent has the perfect ingredients to achieve that big vision. We have the second-largest tropical rainforest on the globe in the Congo Basin. We have more than 50% of the world’s arable land. We have [degraded land] the size of Australia … that could be restored on the continent. We have a third of the world’s mineral stocks. We have the world’s largest and best solar and clean energy resources. Then, of course, [we have] what has the potential to be the greatest asset yet: 10 million young people pouring onto the job market every year. Right now, that acts as a challenge to solve for in the future, [but] that can be a boon for the continent.
Banner image: Solar power in Sudan. Image © UNDP Sudan/Muhanad Sameer.
John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Citations:
Otlhogile, M., & Shirley, R. (2023). The evolving just transition: definitions, context, and practical insights for Africa. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 3(1), 013001. doi:10.1088/2634-4505/ac9a69
Sterl, S., Shirley, R., Dortch, R., Guan, M., & Turner, A. (2023). A Path Across the Rift: Informing African energy transitions by unearthing critical questions and data needs. World Resources Institute, 1. doi:10.46830/wriib.22.00136
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