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Director Woman published its 2026 cohort on 12 August, fifty-four founders and executives from Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Botswana and Lesotho. Among them are the State Diamond Trader’s chief executive, a steel fabricator in Kuruman, a Mpumalanga workshop owner preparing to supply the mining sector, and three founders turning waste and climate literacy into enterprises.

The World Bank and African Development Bank have committed close to $15 billion directly, with $4.5 billion mobilised alongside it. The wider partner total is more than three times that. Officials are careful about the gap, because a pledge and a disbursement are separated by approval, preparation and years.

ACEP and Africa Change Lab have picked innovators from Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana across two tracks. Their proposals cover recovery of retired lithium cells, swapping hubs inside urban markets, cold storage built on reused modules, and offline carbon finance for smallholders. They pitch in Accra this month.

Wole Ogundare, Founder and Managing Partner of Carthena Advisory, sets Ghana’s recovery from its 2022 default against Nigeria’s scale and argues the two are running different races. One is decided by what a unit of output costs to make, the other by everything an investor must price around it. 

The Youth Sustainable Development Network and the Africa Minigrid Developers Association will run four to six week remote placements from later this year, across regulatory coordination, research, sector support and access to capital. Whether it grows depends on an evaluation neither organisation has run yet.

Installed capacity now stands at 4,576MW, of which 841MW is solar, and Kariba’s usable storage has roughly doubled in a year. Almost all of the additional units drawn last year went to the mines, and Open Access is now the mechanism deciding who is served first.

Cost savings of around 42 per cent came from drawing on Guinean hydro across the regional loop instead of burning imported fuel. Guinea-Bissau’s EAGB has moved from a monthly deficit of roughly one million dollars to a positive balance, and the market both now sell in went live this year.

The distribution carries 50% subsidies and tax exemptions, and reaches rural communities alongside public bodies. It arrives while the IEA warns that the fuel underneath every LPG programme on the continent is exposed to a shipping route thousands of miles away.

Africa is inextricably linked to the global decarbonising future, but the cycle must be broken that has defined this transition for eons: exporting unprocessed lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, phosphates and graphite while importing finished batteries at a premium. The Lithium-Ion Battery Value Chain is brutally clear. Mining captures just $11 billion, while value-added segments and end-user markets i.e. Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Battery energy storage systems (BESS) send a minimum $7 trillion beyond the continent’s shores.

The IEA’s 2026 Hydrogen Review finds the continent’s most advanced project targeting engineering design in the third quarter of this year and a final decision in 2027. Two of the largest developments have stalled for want of buyers, while the cost of capital does more to decide outcomes than sunshine does.