ABOUT
Reimagining energy planning for Africa
African Energy Futures will act in service of the community of Hubs with a common vision of transforming Africa’s energy and development landscape. We’re building a future where African institutions lead the continent’s energy transitions. By investing in local research hubs, long-term partnerships, and regional collaboration, African Energy Futures is reshaping how energy decisions are made – starting from the ground up.
Our mission
Powering Africa’s future, on Africa’s terms
All African countries should have the capabilities, resources, and tools to shape their own energy transitions. Achieving this requires African researchers organised into a continent-wide community actively pursuing this goal. We are committed to transforming Africa’s energy planning ecosystem centred on establishing and supporting locally rooted research hubs that drive inclusive, modelled, policy-relevant research – on African terms. If you or your organisation is leading innovative work in energy research, planning, or policy and are ready to shape the continent’s energy future, we invite you to join us in this mission.
Our Approach
Fueling Africa’s energy intelligence
We support the development of national energy research hubs – collaborative ecosystems bringing together African think-tanks, universities, and policymakers. These hubs will receive technical, coordination, and financial support from incubation to independent establishment. Hubs will strengthen local expertise, train the rising generation of energy modellers, develop decision-making tools, and establish robust processes for long-term, context-specific energy planning and policy making. Better policy and enabling environments will attract better investment in energy and industrial infrastructure – driving development.
Acting in service of progress
The Role of African Energy futures
The primary function of African Energy Futures is to provide long-term, flexible funding to Hubs. We cannot expect research and modelling to impact policy decisions and the investment environment if institutions have an uncertain future. Without certainty institutions cannot invest in their staff, in their training programmes, in models and data, and the long-term inclusive research processes needed to influence policy. Furthermore, we cannot expect this work to be done by a single institution. If African voices are going to be influential on the international policy and finance stage, we need to collaborate and scale up fast. African Energy Futures will support hubs in other important ways, to build their maturity such that they can access finance, build platforms and opportunities to engage, and to build sustainability. To solve this problem, African Energy Futures will support the research ecosystem by:
Coordinating Funding
Existing philanthropic and donor support is often focussed on short term capacity of individuals and on specific tools, often ignoring institutional and longer-term structural needs. Too often this creates a cycle of dependency on once-off, consulting led studies with limited buy-in and impact. African Energy Futures will channel this support into longer-term more flexible support to African institutions, building African capacity.
Providing collaboration platforms
African Energy Futures will organise a community of working groups focussed on particular challenges (for example capacity planning, demand forecasting, or data gathering), as well as an annual gathering of hubs and their partners.
Connecting to partners
There are excellent programmes that provide technical and research support that could benefit hubs. African Energy Futures will curate partner programmes in support of building hub capacity, tools, and data.
Providing mentorship and capacity building
Building a skilled energy and economic research team does not happen overnight. African Energy Futures will help connect hubs to international and African institutions (also other hubs) that have been through this before. Connecting hubs to existing training opportunities and mentors from experienced institutions can accelerate development. African Energy Futures also have considerable experience and will provide direct support to hubs, especially around communicating for the political economy.
Providing workplace opportunities
There is nothing better than learning by doing. African Energy Futures can arrange for short-term placements at different institutions where hub members can learn from practitioners experienced in energy, economic and policy analysis.
Capacity Building
Putting Africans at the centre of energy planning
In many African counties, there are simply too few people with the technical, policy, and modelling expertise required to guide long-term energy and economic strategies. Without this local multi-disciplinary capacity, countries are left to rely on external consultants for isolated studies – often disconnected from political reality, social contexts, or development goals. African Energy Futures invite you to join us on a collective African journey. In partnership with you, African Energy Futures will incubate hubs into fully funded partnerships of research institutions, industry, and policymakers that will:
- Skills development
Invest in people:
Hubs will support and train postgraduates, postdocs and academic staff who are working on pressing energy challenges – building the next generation of trusted energy experts. The resulting publications and policy insight will deepen the research voice in local and international fora.
- Governance
Strengthen Institutions:
Long-term funding will enable hubs to develop the tools, modelling infrastructure, relationships and resources needed to grow long-term research capacity from within.
- Alignment
Connect with policymakers:
Foster enduring relationships between locally based researchers and policymakers—ensuring decisions are informed by deep, contextual understanding.
- Unified
Collaborate for scale:
- Economies
Centre development through multi-disciplinary research:
Development and energy are intertwined. We cannot lift Africans without enhancing access to energy. Likewise, we cannot develop our energy resources without diverse economies using that energy and creating employment and wealth.
- Local
Build locally appropriate processes, models and data:
Many international tools are calibrated on global assumptions inappropriate to the local context. Furthermore, because of a lack of data, global trends or trends from other regions are used. Models are often developed without considering social and political contexts. Building locally anchored models, assumptions and data will enhance accuracy and adoption.
Advisory Committee
The AEF is guided by an expanding Advisory Committee of prominent experts on Energy, Economics, Finance and Research in Africa.
Rose Mutiso
Research Director for the Energy for Growth Hub
Saliem Fakir
Founder and Executive Director of the African Climate Foundation
Joseph Curtin
Managing Director on the Power & Climate team at the Rockefeller Foundation
Steve Nicholls
African Energy Futures Director
