Pan-African Initiative to Build Research and Innovation Capacity to Achieve SDG7 for Africa
Introduction and aims
This panel will present the potential for the ANSOLE Energy Compact that promotes multi-level capacity building (Africa-wide, national, university, and community-level action) to address the extremely urgent need to accelerate access to and effective uses of affordable and reliable energy by communities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa has nearly 600 million people without access to electricity. It is urgent to speed up electrification as climate change intensifies and AI and other technological advances accelerate, widening the divides between the haves and the left behind, fueling rising costs of instability. Most alarming is that IEA forecasts show that based on present trends, nearly 600 million will still not have access to electricity by 2030 and be poorly equipped to address the worsening impacts of climate change. While the heart of the challenge is Sub-Saharan Africa, where less than 50% of the population has access to electricity, even countries with high access to electricity in Africa face power shedding and other supply disruptions frequently.
Session Overview
This panel will present the potential for the ANSOLE Energy Compact that promotes multi-level capacity building (Africa-wide, national, university, and community-level action) to address the extremely urgent need to accelerate access to and effective uses of affordable electricity by communities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The ANSOLE Energy Innovation Hub (AEI-Hub) enables the multilevel capacity building to accelerate the achievement of universal access to sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy and its effective use for development for all in Africa.
Speakers will address how ANSOLE and its partners across Africa are building the AEI-Hub to enable acceleration of the pace towards SDG7 in Africa.
AEI-Hub elements –
– ANSOLE sponsored workshops engaging experts, entrepreneurs and mentors with specific expertise and experience to address barriers to more rapid progress towards SD7 for Africa.
– ANSOLE sponsored staff exchanges and mobility to enable collaborating partners to advance shared goals through staff mobility.
– ANSOLE knowledge exchange portal to provide accurate data about research infrastructure and scientific and technical expertise at scientific and technical institutions across Africa to enable sharing of skills and research resources to enable acceleration of the pace towards achievement of SDG7.
– AI tools to empower community leaders and their communities with the knowledge to make effective decisions about energy and other technologies and their financing, deployment and operation in ways that build the capacity of the community to build a better future for the community and its members.
The ANSOLE Energy Innovation Hub (AEI-Hub) enables the multilevel capacity building to enable the acceleration of the achievement of universal access to sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy for all in Africa.
Speakers will address how ANSOLE and its partners across Africa are building the AEI-Hub to enable acceleration of the pace towards SDG7 in Africa.
Inadequate access to necessary knowledge at the community-level to enable decisions about energy technologies, their financing and deployment is a key barrier to achievement of SDG7. Communities empowered with knowledge can take advantage of many existing programs aimed at advancing micro-grid energy systems in Africa, which can be solar, wind, biogas, and small-scale hydro or their combination coupled with effective energy storage. AI tools can help communities to make decisions about matters where the community has little prior experience. ChatGPT and other AI tools can be adapted with Africa-specific data sets and with the capacity to interact orally with community members in vernacular or textual information augmented with the use of video and other multimedia materials.
Expected outcomes
ANSOLE is striving for greater awareness by international organizations, national agencies, the AU Commission, the EU Commission, USAID, development banks, local governments, and religious organizationsU of the work of ANSOLE and of the potential of the AEI Hub to accelerate the pace to achieve SDG7, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa in countries with low access to electricity.
Greater awareness of the AEI Hub is expected to lead to greater funding, particularly from international agencies committed to achieving SDG7 but also from private donors as well as from entrepreneurs that are encouraged to invest in energy technology development, energy systems and components manufacturing, and in products and services that enable more effective use of energy to advance the development of the community.