By Fanuel Chinowaita
ZIMBABWEAN climate activist and innovator Frank Nyasha Mpahlo has revealed plans to use his US$4 million Climate Breakthrough Award to build a continent-wide platform connecting African energy innovators and scaling locally designed clean energy solutions.
In an interview with The Wasu Post, Mpahlo said the Energy+ Innovators Platform would bring together innovators developing home-grown solutions to Africa’s energy challenges while creating opportunities for collaboration, knowledge-sharing and investment.
The platform will not be limited to electricity, but will also cover areas such as water management, agriculture, food systems, transportation, health and renewable energy.
Mpahlo said a key component of the initiative would be developing blended finance models that combine different sources of capital, including grants and loans, to help promising clean-energy enterprises move beyond the pilot stage.
“The Energy+ Innovators Platform is a continent-wide hub connecting African energy innovators, people building hundreds of home-grown energy solutions rooted in local knowledge,” Mpahlo said.
He said Africa’s energy crisis was not simply a shortage of technology, but also a failure to develop solutions that fit the realities of local communities.
“My stance is that Africa’s energy problem is not only a technology problem but a fit-for-purpose problem,” Mpahlo said.
According to Mpahlo, large amounts of climate investment on the continent have gone towards technologies developed elsewhere, which can struggle to meet local needs.
He cited clean cookstoves as an example, arguing that some alternatives to traditional wood-burning stoves address emissions and health concerns but fail to replicate other functions of the traditional hearth.
Mpahlo said his Green Villages model had demonstrated the value of involving communities in designing technologies intended for their use.
“The Green Villages model is proof that community-led design produces relevant and context-specific technology that local people keep using, rather than technology that gets abandoned,” he said.
With hundreds of millions of Africans still lacking access to electricity and many rural households dependent on polluting cooking fuels, Mpahlo said the initiative would focus particularly on communities living beyond the national electricity grid.
He said clean energy solutions would have to be designed around how people actually use energy rather than assumptions about the needs of low-consumption households.
“The initiative will translate into the design and certification of clean energy solutions which replace the use of polluting fuels with clean energy options,” he said.
“Energy needs for rural and marginalised communities which are cut off from the grid need to be studied.”
Mpahlo said consultations and market analysis would be central to determining which technologies communities would actually adopt.
“It has to be tailor-made and fit-for-purpose,” he said.
However, the project is still at the development stage, with Mpahlo saying the immediate focus would be on research, consultations and piloting before implementation.
“The first step of the project development phase entails creating a strategy of how we can achieve the carbon reduction outcomes through clean energy adoption and use,” he said.
“This will entail extensive research, consultations and piloting of both the Energy+ Innovators Platform and the Green Village concepts.”
He said the project was expected to begin in about a year, with measurable results expected thereafter.
Mpahlo also said communities would not be treated merely as beneficiaries of the projects, but would participate directly in designing energy solutions and influencing policy.
“The initiative is predominantly community-based and places users of energy at local level as co-designers of energy solutions,” he said.
He said the approach would allow developers to better understand the energy needs of rural communities while giving communities a role in influencing governments to create an enabling environment for clean energy adoption.