Why energy is crucial to Africa’s development — US official

Energy is fundamental to Africa’s development and must be treated as a central pillar of economic policy, according to the US Secretary of Energy, Charles Wright.

Mr Wright said this on Thursday, as global leaders and investors gathered in Washington, DC, for the 2026 Powering Africa Summit.

The summit is organised by EnergyNet, an events and investment platform focused on Africa’s power and energy sector.

Speaking at a conference, Mr Wright stated that expanding energy access could unlock industrial growth, job creation, and improved living standards.

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According to him, clean cooking solutions, in particular, offer immediate benefits by reducing health risks and freeing up time, especially for women who often spend hours gathering fuel for cooking.

He stated that access to reliable and affordable energy underpins every major indicator of human progress, from health outcomes to economic growth.

“The absence of energy is poverty, despair, and ultimately death,” he said. “Millions of people, he noted, continue to rely on traditional fuels, with nearly a million deaths in Africa annually linked to indoor air pollution caused by the lack of clean cooking energy.”

Mr Wright reiterated that energy should ultimately be viewed through a human-centred lens and should balance economic efficiency with humanitarian goals.

He also criticised what he described as the “paternalistic” and “neocolonial” approach of Western governments to Africa’s energy development.

He said Western countries, including the US under the previous administration, have been dictating how African nations should generate electricity.

He said they were asked to prioritise renewable energy over traditional sources by institutions that fail to capture the continent’s realities.

“But there’s nothing Africa can do to its energy systems in all of our lifetimes that will have a meaningful impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. It will not matter.”

“But it will matter massively, massively, to the lives of Africans,” he added.

According to Mr Wright, the US, Europe, and Asia have spent “over $10 trillion on wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and all the huge transmission lines that are needed”, but these sources still only meet a fraction of their total energy consumption.

He emphasised that Africa’s energy strategy should prioritise human development over symbolic contributions to global climate mitigation.

For Africa, he said, energy decisions should be guided by practical outcomes rather than external pressures.

Different countries, he noted, will require different energy mixes based on their resources and needs.

Similarly, the Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation, Makhtar Diop, said mobilising private capital will be essential to meeting those needs.

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He highlighted the increased investment in the region, while noting that investment will only flow where there is policy stability, strong legal frameworks, and clearly defined, profitable projects.

Governments, he added, cannot fund development alone due to competing fiscal pressures.

The public sector alone cannot do it. We need a coalition among the private, public, and philanthropic sectors.

“A coalition where the public sector’s number one job will not be to use its meagre funds to invest in infrastructure when the private sector can do it. It is to create a condition so that people with huge funds can be attracted to invest in the country,” he said.