Both Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) and African Energy Futures (AEF) endeavour to build capacity in energy modelling in Africa, with the aim of enabling African countries to stand on their own when planning their alternative industrial futures and the energy infrastructure to support economic growth.  We are focused on building institutional infrastructure and working with universities and think tanks across the continent to conduct transparent, inclusive research, train the next generation of leaders, and work with the policymaking and investment community to improve investment in energy access and utility-scale provision.  Through their data-to-deal framing, CCG lays out the connections between scenario framing, modelling, policy formulation, decision-making, and investment, and emphasises the need to involve policymakers and investors throughout.  CCG supports this framing by providing training on various types of open-source modelling, support for country modelling exercises across energy (access and capacity studies), water, land-use, and economics, and long-term capacity building for academics working in this space.  Likewise, AEF provides long-term funding to institutions working in energy modelling to support their research, training, and policy impact work.  AEF also provides support to institutions to accelerate their learning curves by matching them with partners (other African universities or globally, an international energy and modelling institution) that have done similar work. While both CCG and AEF consider energy modelling an important entry point into this conversation, it is insufficient.  To accurately answer policy maker questions (which often centre on issues related to unemployment, poverty, and inequality) you need a suite of researchers and multiple modelling approaches.  It requires a coordinated community of practice working together to generate and share data, build interacting models, and deliver targeted research.  South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission has been coordinating a community of practice across South Africa for several years.  It is the PCC’s goal that a community of modellers, spanning a wide range of environmental, climate, social, economic, financial, and technical disciplines, work together to provide insights about the challenges and opportunities associated with possible transitions.  This best-practice example of collaboration and knowledge sharing serves as a model for other researchers of the complexity and successes of this kind of coordination. Building a research institution that is policy-facing is challenging.  It requires sets of skills traditional academics may not have (for example, how to engage with policymakers in impactful ways, how to build political networks, or how to raise funding and build effective business models).  CCG has specific products to help ease this process, notably “flat pack” courses that come complete with lecture material and examination approaches, as well as long-term support.  However, establishing such a unit can still be challenging, and support from the host university or institution is not guaranteed.  CCG and AEF are collaborating to form a working group of senior academics who are seeking to establish or strengthen modelling institutions at their home universities.  This group helps both CCG and AEF understand the challenges these individuals face and the types of incentives that motivate them, enabling us to design better support products and processes. In this context, CCG, AEF, and PCC are organising a 3-day conference where participants can share the challenges they face in establishing modelling institutions, learn from each other’s research, and explore the kinds of processes and research commissioned by the PCC.  At the conference we hope to share, learn, and develop our understanding of modelling as it applies to transitions, while considering the potential for creating, improving, and linking key models in and for South Africa, such that our understanding of potential just and orderly transitions to net-zero can be improved.