EnergyNet and Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Collaborate for Youth Energy Summit

The ‘Youth Energy Summit (YES!), is a convening hub to allign entrepreneurs, students and early career professionals with the corporate and development communities. With a goal of reaching 100 million people across the African continent over the coming ten years through a network of solution providers, the programme is a combination of in-person and online learning and networking, through the ‘Beyond Privileged 365 Digital Platform’, enabling participation by anyone, from anywhere on the African continent.

The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) is an alliance of philanthropists, financial partners, technology experts and governments in emerging and developed economies. GEAPP’s common mission is to enable Low and Medium Income Countries (LMICs) shift, to a clean energy pro-growth model, that accelerates universal energy access and inclusive economic growth while supporting the global community to meet critical climate goals during the next decade.

As an alliance, GEAPP aims to reduce 4 gigatons of future carbon emissions, expand clean energy access to one billion people and enable 150 million new jobs. With philanthropic partners like the IKEA Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bezos Earth Fund, GEAPP is working to build an enabling environment, capacity, and market conditions for private sector solutions. This is to catalyse new business models through innovation and entrepreneurship, and deploy high-risk capital to encourage private sector solutions.

Through the Africa Energy Forum, EnergyNet have been highly effective at building a global network of industry-leading stakeholders, the majority of whom have initiatives designed to support and develop local communities. However, some of those initiatives remain largely under utilised due to the resources required to establish networks and engage people in those programmes. YES! Is supposed to act as a convening hub to communicate with 100,000,000 Africans over the next 10 years, through a network of philanthropic organisations, mobile operators, universities, learning initiatives, community based networks and corporate partners.

According to Simon Gosling, EnergyNet, “The support of GEAPP is critical to the programme’s success. Not only does it bring in critical investments to provide more travel grants and greater market penetration, it brings a year round partnership striving in harmony to put Africans at the heart of their own development needs, creating millions of community based jobs with carbon-smart technologies, not only improving the livelihoods of children, but also the planet.” 

Joseph Nganga, GEAPP’s Vice President for Africa says “Young entrepreneurs are often excluded from all aspects of the energy transition value chain, and they face disproportionate barriers to educational opportunities, project finance, and decent jobs, particularly those in emerging and developing economies where access is compounded with additional development challenges. To meet ambitious global goals of hundreds of millions of green jobs by 2030, it is urgent that young people are trained and supported to access opportunities and accelerate growth in the renewables sectors, as they seek opportunities in the workforce”.

The Youth Energy Summit in Nairobi in June, will welcome about 1,000 Entrepreneurs, MSMEs, Early Career Professionals, Educators and Students for the summit. GEAPP looks forward to working with EnergyNet to unlock the abundant potentials of young entrepreneurs who will lead the energy transition team, while realising a more equal and sustainable world.

This is as EnergyNet has produced investment forums and executive dialogues for Africa and Latin America’s power sectors, for the past 25 years in Europe, the USA, Asia and across Africa and Latin America.

Best known for the Africa Energy Forum, the longest-serving business development meeting place for senior-level decision makers in Africa’s power sector, other leading investment summits has enabled the organisation provide strategic perspectives on the investment landscape and project preparation including the H2 Africa, Offshore Technology Africa, Powering Africa Summit, Latin American Energy Forum and Latin American & Caribbean Gas Conference and Exhibition.

Having this focus on public and private sector partnerships, the Team has started liasing regularly with stakeholders across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to support these insights, so that relationships and investor insights can be sustained.