Joy Egbe | Supplied
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Imagine not being able to flick on a kettle when you’re craving a cup of tea. Or having to study for your upcoming exams in the darkness. Many communities don’t have to imagine this, for them it’s a reality, and this reality is known as “energy poverty”.
This form of poverty, which is the lack of access to sustainable sources of electricity, is one that impacts nearly 800 million people globally — and about 600 million of these are in sub-Saharan Africa. Activists and advocates across the continent dedicate themselves to combating this type of inequality, and one distinctive young voice in this effort is Joy Egbe, from Nigeria.
Egbe is a climate activist and advocate for clean energy who co-founded an organisation called Newdigit that aims to tackle energy poverty and its negative environmental and social impacts. The 28-year-old found her passion to end this crisis following the death of her aunt, who was exposed to dangerous conditions as a result of connecting to an unsustainable electricity source.
“I lost my aunt who was seven months pregnant to indoor air pollution,” she told the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “This pushed me to pursue energy use in Nigeria.”
Global Citizen had an opportunity to speak with Egbe, who was also a delegate at last year’s COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, to find out more about what energy poverty is, how it’s affecting Nigerians, and what she believes Global Citizens and world leaders can do to improve the status quo.
“As a social entrepreneur advocating for clean energy access, my passion is to eradicate energy poverty in Africa,” she told us.
“When advocating for energy access in this era, the focus is not just access to energy but clean and sustainable energy for all,” she explained. “Because the use of fossil fuels to meet our energy demand either for domestic or industrial purposes is pushing our planet to a point of no return.”
In her work as a clean energy advocate, she has had incredible opportunities to bring Africa’s voice and the issues many Africans face, including that of energy poverty, to the global stage. In 2021, she was not only a delegate for the Pre-COP26 and COP26 climate conferences, but at the latter, she even managed to speak to Britain’s Prince Charles on the critical issues facing Africans. Continue reading