Damilola Ogunbiyi: Growth in the Global South

Damilola Ogunbiyi is CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All. In this episode, she joins Jenn to discuss the critical connection between energy access and poverty, why 666 million people still lack electricity, and how the Global South can leapfrog to clean energy from the start rather than transition later.

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Produced by Chris Attaway

Artwork by Harriet Richardson

Music by Cody Martin

Transcript

Future in Sound - Episode 40 - Growth in the Global South

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] DAMILOLA: You can't get opportunity if you don't have energy, and we can't keep living in this world where we go, okay, you know, it's all right for these people to remain poor because these people have to retain being rich. We have to come up and, and really think about the commonwealth and think, is it going to kill anybody for?

[00:00:17] DAMILOLA: Africa to reach universal access. Can't the rest of the world give another 1% to the carbon footprint to make sure a billion people get out of poverty? Those are the connections. You know, I really want to make and explain to people that everybody can do their bit.

[00:00:44] JENN: Welcome to the Future and Sound podcast. I am your host, Jen Wilson. This is a podcast where we discuss people, planet, and profit. In each episode, we'll learn from world-leading experts who can help us see the future we want. And our role in it.

[00:01:11] JENN: This is episode 40, growth in the Global South.

[00:01:20] JENN: Dalla Obi is the CEO and special representative of the UN Secretary General for the sustainable energy for all and co-chair of UN Energy. She was recognized in the 2024 time 100 climate list as one of the 20 Titans in climate. She is the recipient of the first class Order of Zaid II from the UAE President in recognition of her contribution to the success of the Climate Conference COP 20.

[00:01:52] JENN: She's also received the Global Female Leadership Impact Award in 2024 and the Energy Institute President's Award for 2023. In recognition of her continued role in solving critical global issues, she's been recognized as a trailblazer and her field by Reuters trailblazing. Women in Climate and Reuters trailblazing women in energy among others.

[00:02:16] JENN: With Mrs. Albi at the helm, sustainable energy for all has entered into working relationships with over 200 partners supported over 90 countries globally, and secured commitments of more than $1.4 trillion in energy finance. Now, if that's not a bio, I dunno what is Ola, it is so nice to have you on the Future in Sound podcast.

[00:02:40] JENN: Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:46] JENN: We've just shared the sort of formal, uh, overview on your background, and I'd just love to get your voice over perhaps a 60 to 92nd background, uh, capturing your experience from your point of view. 

[00:02:59] DAMILOLA: Again, thank you so much for having me. It's really important that, um, we speak to different audiences and I'm a big fan of what you do.

[00:03:07] DAMILOLA: So I'm glad that I could finally be on this podcast. In terms of myself, I didn't, I didn't kind of jump into the energy sector straight away. Um, I went to boarding school in England. I was very privileged to do that. I went to university for project construction management and a bit of civil engineering.

[00:03:23] DAMILOLA: And I worked on site, um, building buildings in England, um, for for many years. I got married. And then, um, my dear, very Nigerian husband said, we're moving back. So we moved back to Nigerian. I always feel like I'm a feminist, but I moved really because my husband told me to. But it was, it was really exciting to me.

[00:03:42] DAMILOLA: When I moved back, I decided I wanted to do something different. Um, instead of building buildings for rich people, I wanted to, to work more in development. So I was lucky enough to, given the opportunity to work, um, for my state government, which is Lago State, which is a huge state. It's probably the fourth or fifth largest economy in Africa, 21 million people.

[00:04:01] DAMILOLA: So it's, it's like a country. It's on its own. Um, there I became the first. Um, female general manager of something called the Lego State Electricity Board of where I was responsible to doing about a hundred megawatts of decentralized energy to schools, hospitals, and government facilities. This was a range of energy sources, but my real focus was on renewables, especially for schools and hospitals, which is my real passion, to be honest.

[00:04:27] DAMILOLA: AKA a few years doing that, which was a lot of fun. Um, I got a call, um, asking me to join the president's team to be the, um, basically the senior advisor to the president on everything power sector. I started that, that was quite nice, being in the presidency, a lot going on. Um, you're now dealing with a, with a country, right?

[00:04:47] DAMILOLA: And a country with over 200 million people and trying to find what is the most sustainable way to, to get people outta poverty. Um, and, and I think a lot of people don't really make the connection between electricity and poverty. You know, you can't talk about getting people out of poverty and they stay in energy poverty.

[00:05:04] DAMILOLA: It doesn't, it, it doesn't work. So, um, I worked there and then I was, again, I was very lucky to, um, be appointed as the head of the rural electrification agency. Which is a massive agency, um, task with bringing the people who don't have energy onto the energy ladder, which in Nigeria now is, um, probably about 80 million people.

[00:05:26] DAMILOLA: So I got to the area, um, and I started working a lot with the World Bank and A FDB, where at that time we were able to raise the largest energy access program, which was 550 million from the World Bank and the, um, African Development Bank. And that was matched by Nigerian government. So it was the billion dollar fund.

[00:05:45] DAMILOLA: Focused on private sector, making sure that they basically connected people to renewable energy. Um, so that happened, um, successfully connected about 8 million people to specifically solar energy, which is what I'm pretty much obsessed with and managed to train a cohort of amazing women. I'm, I'm very gender focused, so even in my program when people said they didn't know women, I said, I'm.

[00:06:08] DAMILOLA: Find women 'cause you're not gonna get the grant until you have some women in your organization. So after that I got again, the opportunity I have now, um, which is to join the UN and be the secretary's general's. Um, you know, basically advisor and everything, sustainable energy. It's been really kind of important to see what the global audience sees when you are in the country.

[00:06:31] DAMILOLA: 'cause you don't realize how. As a silo, you are in the country, right? And you feel like when you go out, you tell people the problems and they all understand how amazing it is. And you forget all the different priorities with food, health, everything that everybody has and how you have to really, really bring it together.

[00:06:47] DAMILOLA: So it's something I tend not to say in a lot of, um. Podcast is, I've actually matured a lot in this role. Um, my diplomatic skills are now through the roof because I realize it's an environment where people actually have to like you, which I didn't have when I was back home. It was just about the work. Um, and I also have to keep true to myself, which is, um.

[00:07:11] DAMILOLA: With the amazing team that I have. If we don't implement, then I don't think we need to be doing it. So we don't do reports or reports sake or plan for plaques, plan sake. If I can't see the linkage with supporting the most vulnerable person, it's just not something we do. And that's what's been quite exciting.

[00:07:29] DAMILOLA: So this. Year five or year six now. Um, we have 20, 30 goals. There's a lot of people against us, but, um, that's the exciting part, right? It's, it's always easy when everything is, is easy, but when it's, uh, challenging, that's when real innovation comes through. And, and that's what, at least that my organization, my amazing team, um, we're able to, we're able to form and we look forward being.

[00:07:54] DAMILOLA: On the other side of it. And the other side really is to try and get ourselves outta the job. So we're one of the few organizations that if we exit circa 2030, that means we haven't achieved our goals. So yeah, we're working very hard to make that happen. I know that was more than 90 seconds, but 

[00:08:13] JENN: I was a great overview and I can really hear your commitment to outcomes.

[00:08:18] JENN: Not just the reports, but to outcomes and how are we helping the most vulnerable people? And in your opening remarks, I really am curious to hear more about that interconnection between poverty and energy. For listeners on, on this podcast, many will be coming from, uh, private equity investment background or their business leaders.

[00:08:39] JENN: Just at a high level. Dam Lula, can you share with us just how you think about that interconnectivity between energy and poverty? 

[00:08:47] DAMILOLA: Thank you for that. 'cause I, I do think that is really important. So we are living in a world where we still have about 666 million people with no access to electricity. So they're never gonna hear this podcast that we're having today.

[00:09:00] DAMILOLA: We also have 2.1 billion. People, mostly women and children that have no access to clean cooking fuels, you know, this is how people feed their families. So in terms of the energy poverty angle, let, let's take my continent Africa on, let's break it down to maybe Sub-Saharan Africa. Let's, let's remove South Africa.

[00:09:21] DAMILOLA: The combined amount of gigawatts that are on the grid available is about 81 82 gigawatts. To put that in comparison, that's the same as. The country of Germany, right? So being born black, African, like myself, I'm 20 times at a disadvantage in terms of the electricity I have than anyone in America. So I think maybe that puts it into context.

[00:09:49] DAMILOLA: So the average African, even when they have energy middle class or or, or people you call in poverty, even when they have energy, they have maybe 400 kilowatt hours. The average American has 13,000. So it's not just about energy, it's about energy to be productive, right? It's not just energy in the homes to turn on the light.

[00:10:09] DAMILOLA: It's energy for healthcare systems. It's energy for business, it's energy for industries. That's what we are trying to get to, unless. A lot of these things that we see around the world and insurgency in terms of refugees. People don't live, leave where they're from if they have opportunity. Right. That doesn't happen.

[00:10:28] DAMILOLA: And you can't get opportunity if you don't have energy. You know? And we can't keep living in this world where we go, okay, you know. It's all right for these people to remain poor because these people have to retain being rich. And that's just the order of things. We have to come up and, and really think about the commonwealth and think, is it going to kill anybody for Africa to, to re reach universal access?

[00:10:52] DAMILOLA: Can't the rest of the world give another 1% to the carbon footprint to make sure a billion people get out of poverty? Those are the connections. You know, I really want to make and explain to people that everybody can do their bit. Everybody, even if you're not directly giving money towards the, the cause, you can be efficient with the amount of energy you use, you know, to allow to have carbon spaces for other people to, you know, to, to come into, into play.

[00:11:20] DAMILOLA: The other thing I think it's important is that even when we say people don't have energy, there's still a lot of backup generation. So these are these. Generators that use diesel and petrol that are extremely harmful, but you can't tell people to stop using them. Right. But if you look at the equivalent, the equivalent of like 700 to a or a thousand coal fired, you know, power plants and those are running constantly.

[00:11:45] DAMILOLA: So even. When we leave the poverty and people angle and just think about the climate, right? These aren't things you want people to continuously use 'cause you can't police them. You don't know where they are. You know, they're not like these big power plants that you can turn off or turn on again. And that is what is really powering the, you know, um, the African continent right now.

[00:12:05] DAMILOLA: And that should be scary because it affects everyone. I think, you know, a lot of people just don't really understand how interconnected we are with climate and also with people. 

[00:12:15] JENN: And so it sounds, when we're talking about what's often missed in conversations about the energy transition part of it is that energy, sort of that equity angle.

[00:12:24] JENN: And I'm wondering what else is missed when we have these conversations. I think people miss 

[00:12:30] DAMILOLA: the fact that you can't transition outta something you don't have. We have such an amazing opportunity that the people who don't have access to electricity and clean cooking fuels can get it clean from the start.

[00:12:44] DAMILOLA: And if we don't get it clean from Theat, it will come dirty. And in 20 years time, I could be on a call with you telling you about how they need to transition. So there's a lot of countries that, it's not about transition, it's about green growth. Let's just start green from the beginning. Let's not, let's skip the transition, right?

[00:13:02] DAMILOLA: That's what I think is missing from the conversation. All the technology is there. 'cause everyone goes a research techno. Like no, the, the technology is there now for us to make sure that people coming on the, on the ladder is clean. What is not there is the, is the funding and people not understanding that we need all types of funding on the table to make sure this is a reality.

[00:13:23] DAMILOLA: Because if it's not a reality affects us all 

[00:13:25] JENN: and. In terms of the differences, you've shared some of the differences in transition versus green growth. Um, are there any other nuances to the differences between the global north versus the global South in terms of what's needed at a high level would really welcome any further comments on, uh, the different lens required.

[00:13:46] DAMILOLA: I mean, I think touching on finance is important, especially since you have a private equity, um, group that listens to you. You know, I think there's a also an, an unfair risk matrix when it comes to the continent and comes, comes to, um, the develop the south basically, you know, in terms of are you gonna get your return for investment?

[00:14:04] DAMILOLA: How are you going to exit, um, you know. A lot of equity investors don't come in, debt comes in instead at very, very high rates. Uh, so looking and not just taking the rating agencies and actually looking at projects that are bankable, understanding that it, you know, global South are one of the few places where you can get double digit returns.

[00:14:24] DAMILOLA: It's not always just last mile, um, you know, grant based projects. Actually, you know, some large generation projects and transmission distribution projects that, that, that people could look into. And then also understanding that this is the perfect place where you can do proper blended finance. We are currently working on a, a project supporting, um, the World Bank and the African Development Bank on something called Mission 300.

[00:14:52] DAMILOLA: Alongside the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, which is an amazing program to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030. That is, that is very important. 'cause this has to be done, private sector led and this is about 30 to 40 billion of concessional financing coming in to encourage private sector.

[00:15:13] DAMILOLA: So really, and I don't see we're gonna get that kind of money, um, into the sector and into the renewable sector especially. In the fourth foreseeable future. So that's why it's really important to kind of listen to the private sector. What do you need? What tools do you need? Do you need us to, to engage?

[00:15:29] DAMILOLA: Do you need any, um, government convenings because we need scale and we need people to move fast. You can imagine if we're trying to do this by 2030, all the projects and science and financial closes have to be done. Of 2027. So, um, that's what I would, I would, I would like to focus on. And one other thing, um, I think it's also critical is we need to find a way to do a lot of more local currency financing.

[00:15:55] DAMILOLA: Which isn't always exciting to international finances. I understand. But local currency financing is important because that's how people pay their energy bills. When everything is, is, is, is um, focused or it's paid for by hard currency, there's normally a mismatch. Um, and you. Typically can't go. I mean, you can't do it in your country, not talking about mine.

[00:16:15] DAMILOLA: Go back to people and say, I'm sorry. There's been something about hedging, hedging the dollar that you have to pay 20 times more for your electricity bill. It just doesn't work like that. So finding ways and tools and financial instruments to allow to do more, more local currency is important. We need as a whole community to spend a lot more time on.

[00:16:35] DAMILOLA: All the different financing innovations. So we've done a lot in technology innovation, but financing innovation is still lagging behind.

[00:16:46] JENN: Hey, it's Jen. I just wanted to take a quick moment to let you know a bit about Ricoh and what we do. We're a tech enabled advisory firm that helps private market investors and companies measure sustainability metrics Using our software platform, we also help you to set targets and focus your efforts on sustainability areas that really matter for your business.

[00:17:07] JENN: And finally, we help clients to translate all of this work into your core value creation strategy or your business model. Check us out@re.co.com to get in touch. All right. Now back to our conversation. One of the things that struck me, Dalla, when you were sharing your overview of your background, like you've actually had boots on the ground building projects, you, it's, this isn't just a sort of cerebral, theoretical exercise for you.

[00:17:38] JENN: And I'm wondering, um, your point about. Really looking beyond a country level risk matrix and understanding a project. If you were a private equity investor with pressure to, you know, show returns and you saw opportunity in Africa, what would be some of the tools or the approaches that you would take to assess really strong projects and, you know, maybe tailor your assessment of risk and opportunity to be appropriate for the job?

[00:18:07] JENN: I 

[00:18:07] DAMILOLA: think that's a really good question. I mean, first I'd want to know what sector you'd be interested in, but there's a huge, there's, there's now a huge resurgence of, um, people doing CNI solar, um, so people providing solar and battery storage, um, to actual, um, industries in Africa and they are doing dollarized ppa.

[00:18:29] DAMILOLA: So that's also, that's something quite, um, interesting to people. Sorry. 

[00:18:33] JENN: Damilola. What's a Dollarized PPA for listeners, if they don't know, 

[00:18:37] DAMILOLA: it means a power purchase agreement with the customer. That is dollar. That is in dollars. It's not in local currency, which is sometimes important to private equity.

[00:18:47] DAMILOLA: There are also quite a few funds, so I'll give you an example. We're working with. Africa 50 and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority on their, um, decentralized renewable fund, right? That is a profit making venture. So you could also look at all the different instruments that currently exist in countries, right?

[00:19:06] DAMILOLA: And who are the best partners in countries. So for anybody who are weak, we, we can help with that, but we need to understand what exactly you need. I do understand that a lot of private equity firms, they don't, they don't want to go spend a hundred to 150. Thousand dollars trying to engage what is happening in country or, or start doing feasibilities about projects that they don't understand.

[00:19:28] DAMILOLA: You know, sometimes they need, you know, just the basic information on the political risk, you know, what type of guarantee structure, if there well, in, in, in the country, but also at the project level. And this is something, if it's on the energy space, we can. I think we as SE four can, can help with, but we can also put you in touch with the people you need.

[00:19:47] DAMILOLA: There's a lot of information as well on, on, on websites like African Development Bank and bringing those, those different tools, um, together is important. I also think as us in the energy sector, we need to do something. More in terms of just road shows to the private sector, to the private sector investors with country delegations to show that this is available and people are ready for business.

[00:20:13] DAMILOLA: I'm not under any impression that every country's viable. Not at all. But there's, there, you know, it, it's building blocks, right? There's some countries that have been doing this and are viable now, like South Africa, Nigeria, the Kenya and the other countries are gonna come up in three years and other countries are gonna come up in, in, in five years.

[00:20:30] DAMILOLA: So it's almost to see, understand, you know, what is the risk appetite as well. The other thing we've been saying, which has been really great is, um. A lot of investments from more tech companies, right, who are using energy as different enabler to provide other things like, you know, um, AI resources, um, micro pensions, micro insurances on that same channel.

[00:20:54] DAMILOLA: So energy isn't how they're making money. They're making money because they have all these different add-ons, but having an energy, having, um, the um, which is typically a larger mini grid. Is the way that, you know, they can also offer these, um, services seamlessly. And that's not something we knew would happen when we started this.

[00:21:13] DAMILOLA: This is really to kind of SMEs and, um, larger scale businesses. 

[00:21:17] JENN: And you touched on tech there for a second. Um, you know, obviously at the top of this conversation we were talking about, you know, energy equity and development and the intersection between energy and poverty. And then we also have these global phenomena around.

[00:21:35] JENN: And ai. And I'm just wondering, when you look at some of the trends around artificial intelligence and additional requirements, we talked about population growth as being a stressor on, uh, utilities. How do you think about energy? And AI in the context of the global south. 

[00:21:57] DAMILOLA: It's, it's good and bad. The, the good outweighs the bad by far.

[00:22:01] DAMILOLA: The bad for me is I know just how much more energy is needed to power ai. So that sometimes gives me a little bit of heartache. Um, and, you know, we're pushing with, um, we have this 20, we have this carbon free 24 7 initiative with Google on trying to make sure that the energy that is used for AI is more carbon free.

[00:22:22] DAMILOLA: But, um, on the flip side, um, we see opportunities, um, coming up with, with different servers now, um, on the continent. Um, but more importantly, AI being used for predictability. So I'll give you a example. At Sustainable Energy for we, we, we, we create things called the Integrated Energy Planning. Let me take Madagascar for you to provide adequate cow for your population.

[00:22:46] DAMILOLA: This is the least cost way to do that. That could be a connection to the grid. That could be a mini grid, that could be a small solar home system, right? And this is how you do it. And this is, um, this is how you do it for clean cooking as well. And this is how you do it for cooling, which people leave out, um, when they're, when they're planning energy systems.

[00:23:03] DAMILOLA: But what AI allows us to do is allows us with the data to. To, to figure out two key things. First, what is the affordability and what is the willingness to pay? And they use different indices that we have, like telco data and everything to, to, to plan that. This is how someone could grow, right? So they might just need five light bulbs, one fan.

[00:23:26] DAMILOLA: Microwave today, but they're going to need a freeze freezer and um, a deep freezer in year five and stuff. So that for me has been really exciting. I think this is the first time that we can, we can use big data to predict, but that does not take away going back on field to verify. If this information is correct, I really don't want people to think that AI is going to if, if AI is going to solve that, but it allows us to predict and that prediction is good because it allows us to be a bit more precise with the cost of it.

[00:23:56] DAMILOLA: And with the time where funding is so scar, you cannot waste any money. So you want to have the best type of data to predict how much things cost and people's willingness to pay. 

[00:24:08] JENN: That's really clear. De I could ask you questions all day, but I know you have, uh, a lot on the go. So we're sort of, you know, turning the corner and, uh, we'd love to ask you a couple questions about how you think and how you stay up to date.

[00:24:22] JENN: So starting with, you know, what do you listen to or read to keep up to date? There's so much happening in the energy space, so how do, yeah. How do you, how do you stay current? 

[00:24:33] DAMILOLA: I would love to say that every day I'm reading something. Um, I'm not, I'm very big on data, so any kind of data geeky thing. So I'm always really excited when the SDG seven tracking report comes out.

[00:24:45] DAMILOLA: I obviously have to like, um, know what's happening in current affairs. So like the Economist, the Financial Times, it's kind of my go-to. But then like the IA reports and the IRENA reports, but I also look to kind of the local news on. On trends of what is working well, I, I don't believe that we just take tools from the global North and put it in the global south.

[00:25:08] DAMILOLA: I will, I, I, I try and find, I'm more excited about case studies and what, what, what has worked well that can help the commonwealth, you know, and you can, you can tweak to suit certain, certain environment. Um, but now it's more, um, for me, with everything going on, it's kind of just being more strategic in terms of like.

[00:25:30] DAMILOLA: What can we do as an organization, um, for the people we serve? So it's, it's been a lot more conversations like that, which might not have been the way five years ago. Yes, five years ago we had a plan. We're gonna, we're gonna hit the plan. But now we're kind of like, we're kind of having conversations like we know everything we've just said is probably not gonna happen.

[00:25:49] DAMILOLA: What do you do after that? Do you know? So it's taking a lot of time, it's taking a lot of resources with the travel, but it's just what we have to do. Um, we have to recognize how privileged we are. We have to adapt to, to support, to make sure no one is left behind. And 

[00:26:05] JENN: if you had to choose one book that's most shaped the way you think, what book would that be?

[00:26:10] DAMILOLA: Well, that is actually a difficult one. I really think it might just be in terms of very personal for me, it, it might just be the Bible. Um, although a lot of people think it's very contradictory, it does just give me hope. Give me hope in human beings. I, I really believe in the power of people. What I like about the Bible and like about what I, we do in the UN is that the whole point of developing meant is helping another human being.

[00:26:40] DAMILOLA: Right? I think people forget that. More importantly, helping just one other human being that you might never meet. Um, and it's even more exciting with us 'cause sometimes we're helping babies and anything you could do in life for a baby. To survive. I just feel like, what else were you brought to this world to do?

[00:27:01] DAMILOLA: Right. I, uh, sorry. I get a bit deep about it. Like that's why we exist, right? To help people. And I think that's what, that's what the Bible represents to me, and, and that's what I, I really, really take from it. It's important to just be a good person and it's important for to have good people around you that believe in what you believe in.

[00:27:21] DAMILOLA: Because there's just so many challenges and you can focus on the negative all the time, or you can focus on, at least say, this is what I did when I was on this planet, and, and, and that's what I do. 

[00:27:33] JENN: Thank you so much for the conversation today and for leaving us with such a optimistic and hopeful message.

[00:27:40] DAMILOLA: Fantastic. Thank you.

[00:27:50] JENN: The Future and Sound Podcast is written and hosted by Jen Wilson and produced by Chris Attaway. This podcast is brought to you by Ricoh, a tech powered advisory company helping private market investors pursue sustainability objectives and value creation in tandem. If you enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to tell a friend about it, and if you have a moment to rate us in your podcast app, we'd really appreciate it.

[00:28:14] JENN: Until next time, thanks for listening.