The AL for Infrastructure sector had three major side events as follows:
1. Clean Tech Opportunities in the Energy Sector
This session was presided over by our keynote speaker, Ejiro Gray who is the Executive Director of Governance and Sustainability at Sahara Group. Sahara Group is a leading international energy and infrastructure conglomerate founded in 1996 and headquartered in Lagos with business operations across the energy and infrastructure value chain including the upstream, midstream, downstream, power, real estate and infrastructure.
The session was insightful with key discussions around the following:
- Global energy transition through the years
- Reasons for embracing energy transition
Key energy transition concerns for Africa
- Key technologies and areas where energy transition is taking place
- Africa’s energy access profile
- Human capacity development in energy transition & Clean Technology
How Africans can position themselves for opportunities in Clean Tech and Energy Transition
The session was an eye opener to young people on how they can be involved in the energy transition and how they can identify opportunities for participation alongside the bigger industry players. The session was facilitated by Zibusiso Mtunzi, a network member from Zimbabwe and a graduate trainee at Caterpillar South Africa
2. Bridging the Water and Sanitation Gap in Africa
With the World Bank reporting that only 21% and 26% of the total Sub-Saharan Africa population have access to basic sanitation and hygiene services respectively, this session was important in unpacking the opportunity that exists in the sanitation sector and how it intersects with public health. The session was led by Kofi Boateng, General Manager Safisana Ghana, a waste management start-up in Ghana.
The session was insightful with key discussions around the following:
- The sanitation challenge that exists in Ghana and in the Sub-Saharan Africa context
- The opportunities that exist for young people to create scalable solutions in sanitation across the continent.
How young people can position themselves to create successful projects and start-ups across the continent with funding from development agencies.
- How Safisana model is incorporating both organic waste management and agricultural sustainability by producing organic farming inputs
3. Introduction to AL for Infrastructure
This session was led by our Sector Lead as there were so many participants who had not interacted with the sector before. The Sector Lead gave an in-depth overview of the sector activities and initiatives and onboarded the conference participants to our Mighty Networks page. It was an eye opener to many of the participants who now wanted to be active participants within our communities of practice. Other network members like Wuntia Gomda from Ghana provided testimonies of their engagement with the sector over the years and how it is beneficial to be part of the network.
