“Africa is writing its energy future”: Dr Angela Wilkinson Opening Keynote Powering Futures Conference in Kenya

Powering Futures: Africa’s Invitation to World Energy Stewardship

As prepared for delivery at the Opening Address of the 2026 "Powering Futures" conference in Kenya.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues and Friends,

Thank you to our Kenya and South African Member Committees, - and to all the conference organisers, for inviting me to the Powering Futures Conference and for the opportunity to help set the scene for what I hope will be productive, inspiring and informed conversations about Africa’s energy futures.

Africa is writing its energy future.

Every new connection, every transmission line, every investment, every entrepreneur, every innovation is shrinking the distance between imagination and implementation. Every success is writing the next chapter in world energy.

And here in Kenya, you are showing the world that expanding energy access and advancing energy transitions can progress together.

For more than one hundred years, the World Energy Council has existed to develop energy for the benefit of people, societies and international cooperation.

During that century, the world energy system has grown to support longer lives, healthier communities, industrial development, modern healthcare, global connectivity and greater prosperity.

In many parts of the world, reliable energy has become invisible because it works.

Across Africa, energy is visible every day because it matters every day.

We also meet at another pivotal moment.

The world is entering a new era of energy leadership.

The decade of declarations is giving way to the harder work of delivering resilient, productive and affordable energy systems amid geopolitical uncertainty, extreme weather and accelerating demand.

The conflict in the Middle East reminds us how closely energy security, economic resilience and global stability are connected.

At the same time, demand for electricity is rising almost everywhere, driven by industrial development, urbanisation, mobility, digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

Growth has returned to the centre of energy policy.

And resilience has become a defining leadership challenge—at the level of assets, enterprises, communities and whole societies.

The World Energy Council started up at the end of empires to promote energy for peace.

Kenya and South Africa are among the most active membership hubs in our global community network, which now spans more than one hundred countries.

For much of the 20th century, world energy leadership was framed around three little words: scarcity, security and supply.

Those remain important.

The 21st century energy challenges require new words: resilience, abundance and flourishing.

The world is not simply replacing old for new technologies: it has to maintain the existing system whilst building the next one.

Africa has abundant resources including the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population.

As it charts its own pathways of progress, our community exists to help Africa share its leadership and learning with the rest of the world as stewards of the next century of energy.

World energy has never been a story of decarbonisation alone, nor simply the story of the energy industry.

It has become the operating system of modern civilisation.

It connects people and communities with infrastructure, technology, markets, institutions and investment.

Increasingly, it sits at the interface of digital innovation, industrial development and human progress.

Africa is already connecting these dots.

From Nigeria and Mozambique’s investments in gas-supported transition pathways, to South Africa’s combination of renewables, storage, grid expansion and financial system reform.

From Ethiopia’s investment in hydropower and regional electricity trade, to Egypt’s deployment of renewable energy supported by strategic grid investment.

Like you, we believe there is no one-size-fits-all global pathway. Different starting points create different opportunities. Different resources create different solutions. Different societies will move at different speeds.

World energy leadership is increasingly about interoperability - learning from regional diversity rather than imposing global uniformity.

Net zero remains an important milestone for many countries. And there are many pathways.

Our shared destination is broader: abundant energy that enables human flourishing on a healthy planet.

Kenya’s story demonstrates what a future of more and better energy can look like.

Its leadership in geothermal development, renewable electricity and system innovation has established one of Africa’s most advanced energy markets.

Building an even more flexible, integrated and resilient energy system will enable Kenya to advance societal development and clean energy ambitions together.

The lessons, expertise, ambition and leadership shared throughout this conference deserve to be heard across Africa and around the world.

At the World Energy Council, we believe effective stewardship requires three shared leadership capabilities.

The first is rebalancing energy - making better decisions to address trade-offs and synergies between energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability outcomes as an energy system grows and evolves.

The second is rehearsing resilience at the interface of digital-energy-community-industry ecosystems to prepare for disruption before it arrives.

The third is navigating transformational possibilities – but explore multiple pathways towards abundance, resilience and flourishing.

These are the capabilities we want to develop together - with your leadership, for your use and for the benefit of African societies.

A flexible and real time World Energy Trilemma.

Practical resilience partnerships.

A new World Energy Compass.

And more inclusive and intergenerational dialogue which opens space for diverse African voices to shape our future-facing world energy agenda.

I look forward to our conversation and to deeper collaboration as we move to the Riyadh World Energy Congress on 26 to 29 April 2027. Its will be the biggest and best yet, a bold start to our second century of convening.

I invite you all - as fellow stewards - of a new century of world energy development.

Together, we can lead and learn how to navigate towards abundant energy for human flourishing.

Thank you.