World
Pathways Towards Africa’s Energy Security
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Today, African countries face major challenges in ensuring energy security. Several reports indicate Africa is experiencing rapid population growth, rising unemployment, persistent ethnic conflicts and a lack of good governance. Research further shows worsening energy crisis combined with the factors mentioned are seriously constraining economic growth on the continent.
It is clear that to solve these problems a large-scale development programme is required, including a strategy based on achieving the UN sustainable development goals. Experts believe that nuclear technologies can become a driver for socio-economic development and a comprehensive solution to systemic continent-wide problems. Others trust and argue that ‘energy mix’ as a more sustainable way out in creating the energy base for domestic utilization and for industrialization.
Energy is highly essential for aspects of large-scale development. The energy deficit is severely hampering Africa’s efforts to improve the quality of life, hindering effective industrial production. World Bank President, Ajay Banga, and his AfDB counterpart, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, have stated approximately 600 million Africans lack access to electricity (energy) and this unfortunate situation is creating significant barriers to health care, education, productivity, digital inclusivity, and ultimately job creation.
On their part, the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) are partnering to provide electricity access to, at least, 300 million people in Africa by 2030. According to Banga and Adesina, it would require an additional policy action from African governments, financing from multilateral development banks, and private sector investment to see this through. This also depends on the kind of energy provided in Africa.
That however, leaders of African governments are keenly interested in adopting nuclear energy to end chronic power deficit but some maybe forced either to keep on postponing or completely abandon the project primarily due to lack of finance or credit guarantees.
Within the framework of the 2018 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit held in Johannesburg, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at a bilateral meeting that South Africa was not ready to renew the agreement on the construction of nuclear power plants in South Africa.
Putin raised the subject of a nuclear deal at a private meeting with Ramaphosa, but his host said Pretoria could not sign such a deal for now. Ramaphosa has put nuclear expansion on the back burner since taking office as president, saying “it is too expensive” and has focused instead on election campaign pledges to revive the economy and crackdown on corruption.
Ramaphosa said “We have to look at where the economy is – we have excess power and we have no money to go for a major nuclear plant building. The nuclear process has to be looked at in the broad context of affordability.”
Under Jacob Zuma, South Africa championed plans to build as many as eight reactors that would generate 9,600 megawatts of energy starting from 2023 and cost as much as $84 billion – a programme critics say the country can’t simply afford and doesn’t absolutely need.
There is only one nuclear power plant on the entire African continent, namely, the Koeberg nuclear power station in South Africa. Commissioned in 1984, Koeberg provides nearly 2,000 megawatts which is about 5% of installed electricity generation in South Africa.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated, as always, in an interview with the Hommes d’Afrique magazine posted to the ministry’s official website, that Russia and African countries were cooperating on high technology and Russia is highly committed to contributing towards sustainable development in Africa.
According to him, “Rosatom is considering several projects that are of interest to Africans, for instance, the creation of a nuclear research and technology centre in Zambia. Nigeria has a similar project. There are good prospects for cooperation with Ghana, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Talks are underway on the construction of a nuclear power plant in South Africa.”
Foreign and local Russian media further reported that Russia wanted to turn nuclear energy into a major export industry. It has signed several agreements with as many as 14 African countries with no nuclear tradition, including Rwanda and Zambia, and is set to build a large nuclear plant in Egypt.
“Indeed, Rwanda has just joined the chorus by signing an MOU with the Russians to build a nuclear power plant. This is something of a joke. How will this be financed? Rwanda’s annual budget is US$3 billion. A nuclear power plant will cost not less than $9 billion which is equivalent to Rwanda’s entire Gross Domestic Product,” David Himbara, Rwandan-Canadian Professor of International Development at Canada’s Centennial College, wrote me in an emailed interview query.
Professor Himbara said that Rwandan President Paul Kagame always believed that he must validate his supposedly visionary and innovative leadership by pronouncing grand projects that rarely materialized.
Nonetheless, Ghana has also signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the State Atomic Energy Corporation of the Federation of Russia for the construction of a nuclear power plant. The plant will produce up to 1,200 megawatts. The Russian reactor will cost a minimum of $4.2 billion. The financing scheme has not been finalized. It will take about eight to ten years from site feasibility studies to the commissioning of the first unit.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2017 Report concluded that Ghana is still in an early phase of developing nuclear energy. So far, Ghana has enacted a comprehensive nuclear law and established an independent Nuclear Regulatory Authority.
In June 2024, Dr Robert Sogbadji, deputy director in charge of nuclear and alternative energy, explained to this article author that Ghana would select, by December 2024, a foreign company to build its first nuclear power plants. Ghana is working steadily with its vendor partners with serious considerations on favourable financial terms and technology. Currently, Ghana has identified two sites to accommodate its first nuclear power plant and is ready to identify a vendor country and technology by the end of 2024. Russia, China, France, the United States and Korea are the leading contenders for vendor identification.
In accordance the Ghana Energy Transition Framework, Ghana seeks to provide energy security and address energy poverty as well as reduce the cost of electricity by further diversifying the energy mix with gas thermal, hydro power, nuclear power, solar, wind and other modern renewables. Since Ghana has exhausted all its large hydro potentials, Ghana seeks to nuclear and gas thermal power as the base-load to support the intermittent renewables.
In the case of Zambia, under the agreement that was concluded in December 2016 to build a nuclear deal worth $10 billion. Shadreck Luwita, Zambian Ambassador to the Russian Federation, informed that the processes of design, feasibility study and approvals regarding the project have almost been concluded.
The Zambian Government hopes that upon commissioning of this project, excess power generated from this plant could be made available for export to neighbouring countries under the Southern African Development Community Power Pool framework arrangement, he said.
In late February 2020, Chairperson of the Federation Council (the Upper House or the Senate), Valentina Matviyenko, headed a Russian delegation on a three-day working visit aimed at strengthening parliamentary diplomacy with Namibia and Zambia.
According to an official release from the Federation Council, the visit was within the broad framework mechanism of parliamentary consultations between Russia and African countries. The key focus are on political dialogue, economic partnership and humanitarian spheres with Namibia and Zambia.
The delegation held talks with President Edgar Lungu at the State House in Lusaka, Zambia. The delegation referred to their visit “as a reciprocal visit” and emphasized unreserved commitment to strengthen political dialogue and then re-affirmed interests in broadening economic cooperation with Zambia.
There was an in-depth discussion construction of the nuclear plant. Under the agreement that was concluded in December 2016 the construction of the nuclear plant was estimated at $10 billion. The processes of design, feasibility study and approvals regarding the project concluded. Russia was unprepared to make a financial commitment, and Zambia lacked adequate funds to finance the project.
Matviyenko said: “Now the start of the construction of a center for nuclear science and technology has been suspended due to financial issues. I would like to say that the request submitted to the Russian president is being carefully considered by the ministries and departments. I’m confident that we will jointly find options to promote funding to roll out the construction of a centre for nuclear science and technology.”
Of course, the construction of the nuclear plants will qualitatively change the economy of Zambia, not only to fully meet its electricity needs, but also to export it to other southern African countries. The Zambian government refers to it as revenue generation tool using the phrase – “this plant could make available for export to neighbouring countries under the Southern African Development Community Power Pool framework arrangement.”
In his discussion, Dr. Scott Firsing, a Research Fellow at Monash University South Africa, says Africa and the world needs nuclear, along with solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, for cleaner energy. Africa can leapfrog outdated technology and help lead a new clean energy revolution.
He believes that “nuclear will always have a role in energy generation because it’s the best way of producing large amounts of carbon-free electricity. The key hindrance is the cost of producing nuclear energy and how best to deal with nuclear waste so as to maintain safe environment, the risk that it poses from poor handling and management.”
Professor Stephen Thomas, a Nuclear Economist from the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom explains that African countries lack the nuclear expertise and infrastructure, Most important, they lack the financing capability. Russia claims to offer adequate finance, but that claim of preparedness to support construction of nuclear plants across Africa has not been demonstrated outside centrally planned economy.
“Nuclear power is an expensive diversion from policies that could meet the objectives of improving the reliability of electricity supplies in Africa, making power affordable for consumers and meeting environmental goals,” he wrote in an emailed interview.
Thomas added: “Nuclear is too high an economic risk for countries that cannot afford to make big mistakes. However, they must be guided by Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan, millions of people are still suffering from radiation and radiation related diseases till today.”
Currently, many African countries are facing an energy crisis, for both domestic and industrial use. Energy poverty affects millions of their citizens. Over 600 million in Sub-Saharan Africa out of more than one billion people still do not have electricity. The industrial sector needs power for its operations and production for the newly established single continental market.
It is in this context that several African countries are exploring nuclear energy as part of the solution. Russia is on a charm offensive across Africa signing and re-signing agreements with many governments to build nuclear power plants. After the first Russia-Africa summit, it has, as an exceptional case, granted a $29 billion loan for construction in Egypt based on its strategic bilateral relations.
The nuclear agreement was signed as far back as 2015. For now, it is difficult to say how other African countries would finance the construction of their plants compared with Francophone African leaders bartering their natural resources for Russia to provide security and undertake various infrastructure projects. Burkina Faso’s nuclear ambitions went viral after signing a memorandum of understanding, not yet an agreement, over nuclear power with Russia in 2023.
For more than 30 years, Russia has been pushing for post-Soviet relations, but with nuclear energy diplomacy Africans have to wait for another generation. The dreams of building nuclear plants are, in other words, far from reality, and will hold back the full realization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and sustainable development goals under AU Agenda 2063.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A $1 million funding package has been secured by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, Echovane, to expand its market research platform.
The fresh capital would be used by the company to build AI agents that execute market research end-to-end, used by Fortune-500 firms, including P&G, Haleon, and Kantar.
Echovane will utilise the funds, co-led by Titan Capital and Neon Fund, to make complex market research a done-for-you AI-native service.
The platform is built on the premise that AI should take on the machinery of research while researchers retain control over the judgment. The result should be faster execution without sacrificing rigour, traceability or trust.
Echovane was founded by former Amazon, Stripe, Gojek and Razorpay product leaders and graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Smriti Gupta, Vipul Nair and Himadri Roy.
They initially set out to build an AI moderator for consumer interviews. But the deeper they went, the clearer it became that the interview was only a fraction of the problem. Research teams were still spending weeks recruiting participants, coordinating fieldwork, analysing evidence and turning it into something the business could act on.
So, the founders expanded Echovane into the execution layer for the entire research process.
“We thought better AI interviews would unlock faster research. But that was only one step in the research operations, for one methodology of research.
“In reality, research is more complex, and can vary from interviews to unobtrusive observations and longitudinal studies. It has multi-level complexity including finding niche participants, getting the research completed on time with them and maintaining quality checks,” the chief executive of Echovane, Smriti Gupta, stated.
“This funding allows us to deepen the agent infrastructure behind Echovane, expand our multimodal capabilities, and strengthen the global participant network required to deliver increasingly complex studies with consistency,” the chief technical officer, Vipul Nair, noted.
Also commenting, the chief operating officer of Echovane, Himadri Roy, said, “Having done the research ourselves, we understand the operational pain researchers have to go through to conduct a good research that gives useful insights.”
“Echovane has made complex, multi-market studies feel simple. They find the right hard-to-reach participants, handle the nuances across markets and languages, and deliver actionable insights with remarkable speed and consistency,” the Consumer Science and Product Experience Lead for Haleon, Zee Alcasid, disclosed.
“Echovane turned a month of product research into two days. They reached exactly the right participants and let us test, learn and iterate continuously across multiple audiences, countries, product variants all within a single study that would be impossible to execute at speed and scale,” the chief product officer for Trustly, Adam D’arcy, stated.
A spokesperson for Titan Capital said, “We have backed Smriti, Vipul and Himadri because they have deeply understood why market research has stayed slow and expensive for decades.
“With Echovane, they are building an AI-native, end-to-end research platform focused on the quality of the final insight, encoding each client’s context into a system that gets sharper with every study.
“They are turning research from a recurring expense into compounding infrastructure — faster, cheaper and genuinely deeper. Their first-principles thinking and capital-efficient execution gave us confidence in Echovane’s long-term potential.”
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Russia’s system of foreign students’ admission is currently experiencing a completely different shape, due to the rapidly shifting geopolitical reality. The emerging trends are closely connected with increasing the number of highly interested applicants rather than the quality of education. The geopolitical shift is pushing Russia to make education for young Africans an ultimate priority. The quota campaign has already begun as the figure compares favourably with previous benchmarks but, to some considerable extent, noticeable challenges are currently affecting enrollment from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite that, general interest in Russian education among foreign nationals is increasing; the quota campaign confirms this trend. Last year, for instance, there were about 144,000 registrations in Rossotrudnichestvo’s Education in Russian system. The number has exceeded 160,000 in 2026. What is important here is that Russia shows preparedness to get more students from developing countries, especially from Africa and uses it as a factor for influencing its foreign policy in the region.
Regarding educational initiatives, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with relevant agencies and organisations are active in Africa. Noticeably, Russia is developing and expanding the existing, successfully operating cooperation in the sphere of education. In fact, priority is given to projects in the field of education and training of professional personnel for African countries. Currently, over 37,000 students from Africa are studying at Russian universities. Reports say a gradual increase in the number of scholarships for African citizens and the expansion of the range of professional training programs will provide a strong incentive for further promoting education at Russian universities.
This will continue to actively strengthen inter-university ties with African partners, including through specialised umbrella organisations such as the Russian-African Network University, the Consortium of Technical Universities “Nadra Africa” based at the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University, the Russian-African Network Transport University, and the Consortium of Russian Universities Working in West Africa based at the NGO “Centre for Public Diplomacy.”
Reports further indicated that the Rossotrudnichestvo representative offices—the Russian Science and Culture Centres—operating in eight African countries, as well as the Open Education Centres operating under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Education in 31 African countries, serve as a solid foundation for our humanitarian presence in Africa. They serve as conduits for the Russian language and culture on the continent. It is, however, hoped that their number would only increase in the subsequent years.
While addressing the staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness to cooperate actively in the sustainable economic development and to strengthen efforts at training the needed specialists and professionals for Africa. After the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991, there were problems sustaining relations with Africa. Then, after more than a decade, Russia started to return to Africa. This process has been ongoing for the past 15 years, according to the top Russian diplomat.
According to Lavrov, these past few years have been characterised by frequent interactions between Russian and African Foreign Ministers, plethora of MoUs were signed that set out the broad parameters of cooperation. Russia’s Education Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry have raised the quotas for many African countries, the highest given to Angola, Ethiopia, Namibia and Mozambique, and South Africa.
According to a report posted on the MFA website in August, for instance, some 1,120 Angolans have enrolled, on Russian scholarships or grants, at various institutes and universities throughout the Russian Federation. Figures for other African countries are available on the official information portal of the ministry.
Besides state-sponsored students, Russia’s Education Ministry has also launched a large-scale educational campaign targeting the recruitment of private foreign students into its educational institutions across the Russian Federation. The program is to be implemented until 2025, which has a website (studyinrussia) translated into different languages, seeks to boost the popularity and improve its image abroad.
Undoubtedly, Russia aims at strengthening the next generation of pro-Russian elites who will help promote its interests, including long-term ones in their home countries. With this in mind, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ultimately, hope to improve the efficiency of “soft power” in Africa, though not to the levels during the Soviet era.
Understandably, Russia is now targeting Africa’s fast-growing population as a huge potential market for knowledge transfer and export education. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a widely circulated Russian daily newspaper, reported that Russia has been focusing on the young population in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, targeting the elite and middle class in these markets for the export of education, which has great potential.
The newspaper reported on the advantages of multiculturalism and cross-cultural interactive activities paving the way for integration in Russian society. As far back as 2023, Russia’s Federation Council and State Duma (upper and lower houses of parliament) passed a bill. That bill was finally signed into law, allowing foreign students the right to employment, a replica of the work and study model in Western and European countries.
Professor Viktor Sadovnichy, Rector of Moscow State University and Chairman of the Russian Rectors’ Association, an organisation that unites more than 700 heads of higher education institutions, argued that education and demography are interconnected; developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have growing middle classes. “This favours the export of our education; it has great potential cooperating in the education sphere, it could serve as a huge market – training young professionals that are in demand on the labour market,” Sadovnichy said, addressing a plenary meeting of the Russian Rectors’ Association at Peter the Great St Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
Professor Natalia Vlasova, Deputy Rector at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the Ural State University of Economics in Yekaterinburg, explained that many African countries are developing rapidly, and the African elites and the growing middle-class have great potential for sponsoring their children’s education abroad. “In the times of the Soviet Union, African countries were strategic partners, and now we should reactivate these relations because in the near future they will have big economic and political power. This could, indeed, be a huge market and has the business potential,” she noted assertively.
An educational survey released in September 2024, divided into five major groups, said Russia has made significant efforts at improving teaching (the learning environment), research, citations (research influence), knowledge transfer, and international outlook (staff, students, research) in the educational field, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
One year after launching a continental initiative designed to make excellence in public governance the foundation of a new drive to transform Africa, LEAD, the Africa CEO Forum’s pan-African leadership programme, takes stock of its first cohort and announces the launch of its second class. Built around a community of senior public decision-makers committed to modernising the state and to the continent’s digital transformation, this new cohort gathers for three days, from 28 to 30 August 2026, on the campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Rabat, Morocco.
A second cohort that confirms the programme’s durability
For its second class, LEAD brings together 50 fellows, senior public decision-makers engaged in the design and implementation of the continent’s economic and social policies. Over three days, participants take part in collective and collaborative working sessions, peer exchanges and meetings with figures from the public, business and academic spheres, in order to compare their practices and build shared responses to the major challenges of governance.
Speakers include Mehdi Jomaa, former Head of Government of Tunisia, Donald Kaberuka, Managing Partner & Founder, SouthBridge Group, and former President of the African Development Bank, Serge Ekue, President of the West African Development Bank (BOAD), Sanjay Jain, co-creator of India Stack and Director of Digital Public Infrastructure, Gates Foundation, and Mauricio Cardenas, Professor of Professional Practice in Global Leadership, Columbia SIPA, and former Finance Minister of Colombia (2012-2018).
They share their reform experience, their public policy trade-offs and their view of continental priorities. Throughout the programme, the cohort benefits from the dedicated support of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Asafo & Co, BOAD, BCG and the African Development Bank, LEAD partners that have chosen to invest in the transformation of African public action.
LEAD, a pan-African community serving public action
Created by the AFRICA CEO FORUM, LEAD is a leadership programme whose ambition is to reposition Africa’s administrative elite as a driver of reform, of performance and of dialogue with all the continent’s stakeholders.
Designed for senior African public decision-makers, LEAD sets out to build a lasting community of public officials able to share their experience, compare their practices and build common solutions to the major economic, technological and institutional transformations under way in Africa. That community is structured around three pillars: modernizing the state, improving public services, and strengthening cooperation between governments, development institutions and private-sector players.
From fellows to alumni: a long-term initiative
Made up of 36 fellows drawn from a range of administrations and institutions and representing 24 countries across the continent, LEAD’s first cohort demonstrated the quality and the potential of this community from its very first year. In less than twelve months, six of its members have taken a significant step forward: two have been appointed ministers, two have moved into strategic positions at the highest level of the state and two have been promoted to chief executive roles. These moves, which account for 16.7% of the first class, show the role LEAD plays as an accelerator of impact within African administrations.
By bringing together a new cohort of fellows every year, each of them joining the LEAD alumni community, the initiative follows a long-term trajectory: in time, to unite several hundred African public decision-makers around a shared culture of transparency, performance and regional cooperation.
A first year devoted to public service and digital public infrastructure
Throughout the year, the fellows devoted their work to strengthening African public action, to make excellence in public governance a central lever of transformation. An awareness campaign, run as part of Africa Public Service Day, brought to light those who, within the continent’s administrations and institutions, are concretely transforming public policy and improving the services offered to citizens.
Members of the cohort also took part in a special round table held in Kigali during the ACF 2026, in order to carry their thinking to a wider community of public and private leaders. That forum reinforced LEAD’s role as a platform for dialogue between the administrative elite and the continent’s economic players. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) formed the main thread of this first year of work.
Discussions covered issues at the heart of the digital sovereignty of African states: digital identity, payments, secure data exchange, interoperability, governance and the protection of citizens. This work examined the conditions under which African states are developing, in some cases, and can develop, in others, shared, open infrastructure robust enough to improve the quality of public services while supporting local innovation and preserving the capacity of public authorities to set the rules of the game.
A white paper to move from consuming technology to creating value
This year of work concludes with the publication, in collaboration with BCG, LEAD’s Knowledge Partner, of a white paper on Africa’s place in the digital economy and in artificial intelligence. With the digital economy still accounting for around 5% of African GDP, against close to 15% worldwide, the paper calls on the continent to shift from a logic of technology consumption to one of value creation.
The white paper identifies three structuring priorities for African public actors:
- Building shared digital infrastructure that serves as the backbone of public services and private innovation.
- Pooling investment in order to reach critical mass and avoid the fragmentation of efforts across the continent.
- Favouring open and interoperable architectures, with trust and governance built in by design, so as to protect citizens while stimulating the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The white paper is available here to all public decision-makers, technical partners and institutions concerned.
“LEAD’s first cohort confirms a simple conviction: Africa already has the women and men capable of profoundly transforming public action. Our responsibility, either with our partners, is to give them, at pan-African level, a space in which to compare experience, build common solutions and bring forward a new generation of public policy. With this second cohort, we want to accelerate the move from ambition to execution, in particular on digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence, two decisive issues for sovereignty, for the effectiveness of the state and for value creation across the continent,” says Amir Ben Yahmed, President of the Africa CEO Forum.
