Today’s guest on Cleaning Up is Damilola Ogunbiyi. Damilola is CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, the UN partner organization dedicated to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.

Damilola is a returning guest on Cleaning Up after first joining us for Episode 62 in 2021. She’s back to tell us how SEforAll is progressing in its mission to bring electricity to the whole world. After talking Michael through a raft of SEforAll’s new initiatives – across everything from clean cooking to carbon markets - Damilola ends with a passionate plea to change the conversation around the energy needs of the developing world:

“What is happening is you're using a conversation of no fossil / fossil to fund nothing… The crux of it is, if you look at the money that's going in to Africa, 1.5% of all renewable investment? It's absurd, it is embarrassing.”

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Relevant Guest & Topic Links

Learn more about SEforAll’s mission: https://www.seforall.org/

Find out more about the parameters of SDG7: https://www.seforall.org/sustainable-development-goal-7-sdg7

Read and explore last year’s Energy Progress Report 2022: https://trackingsdg7.esmap.org/

Damilola first featured on Episode 62 of Cleaning Up in 2021: https://www.cleaningup.live/ep62-damilola-ogunbiyi-energy-the-red-thread-through-the-sdgs/

Edited Highlights from Episode 62 are available here: https://www.cleaningup.live/p/ep62-eh/

Episode 118 of Cleaning Up featured Achim Steiner, Administrator of of UNDP and Co-chair of UN Energy alongside Damilola: https://www.cleaningup.live/ep118-achim-steiner-sustaining-development/

Our episodes featuring Alain Ebobisse, Elizabeth Wathuti and Bill McKibben can all be found in our Development playlist on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe8ZTD7dMaaDSF7Z5EpAvtWOs8HPUEdC3

Guest Bio

Damilola Ogunbiyi is the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy. Before joining SEforAll, Damilola was the first female Managing Director of the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency, where she initiated the Nigerian Electrification Project, a programme that to date has provided energy access to over 5 million people across Nigeria

Before joining the Federal Government of Nigeria, Damilola was the first female General Manager of the Lagos State Electricity Board. Under her leadership, five independent power projects were completed to deliver over 55 megawatts of power to Lagos State hospitals, schools, and government facilities.

Damilola is a member of the Global Leadership Council of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, an Advisory Board member of the Centre on Global Energy Policy, a member of the Development Advisory Council of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a member of the Clean Cooking Alliance Advisory Board, a member of the Advisory Board of University of Oxford’s Future of Cooling Programme, and Co-Chair of UN–Energy.

Damilola holds a bachelor’s degree in Project Management with Construction and a Master’s degree in Construction Management with Public Private Partnership from the University of Brighton.

MJ-12 and The Report From Iron Mountain with the Collins Brothers on The Grassy Knoll with Vyz the Great. (2006)