• Saturday, July 27, 2024
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BusinessDay

Glory Oguegbu, CEO, Africa Energy Fellowship

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Glory is an award-winning development entrepreneur specialising in the promotion of renewable energy and climate change advocacy for economic growth and development. She’s the founder of Glow Initiative for Economic Empowerment under which they have various environmental programmes championing climate change education in Nigerian institutions, even as they provide capacity building on renewable energy technologies.

In 2019, she created the Renewable Energy Technology Training Institute (RETTI) which is improving economic development through the provision of access to clean electricity to benefit 93 million Nigerians without access by training and preparing new solar designers and installers to serve as competent workforce and entrepreneurs.

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She later founded the RETTI Virtual University, Africa’s first Learning Management system and online education platform for easy access and affordable renewable and solar energy education. She pioneered the Africa Fellowship for Young Energy Leaders and the Climate Leadership Fellowship to groom and mentor the next generation of African energy leaders who will drive sustainable energy transition and promote Africa’s climate resilience.

The Climate Leadership Fellowship formally launched during the UNFCCC COP 26 Glasgow UK, is created to train 2000 youth climate educators to teach and mentor 200,000 students in 5 years through the ‘Adopt a School’ project. Fellows are also trained to collect data as part of the climate soldier movement after which they implement the Climate Data Policy so that funds and opportunities can go to the people and areas most affected by climate change.

Glory’s climate change activism began after coming across a campaign of World Wildlife Fund titled ‘Evolution’, where a man was disfigured like a fish, after vowing to make a difference. Since then, she has been a big promoter of contextual climate change literature.

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She then created a climate education toolkit which includes contextualised climate information about Africa which was launched alongside the climate leadership fellowship at cop 26 Glasgow.

In 2015, Glory met President Obama through the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a flagship of President Barrack Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative, a recognition for her work promoting a safer and healthier world through climate literacy and the promotion of renewable energy as a sustainable electricity source.

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Her work on climate change and renewable energy has earned her organisation a partnership with Nigeria’s giant financial institution – Access Bank Plc, who has adopted and is providing financial support for three of her programmes – The Climate Leadership Fellowship, The Solar for School Community Project, The Solar Skills Empowerment Training Programme which has collectively reached 86, 000 Nigerian students with climate information, provided electricity access to 4872 students from 5 off-grid schools, and trained 300 local youths on solar engineering and entrepreneurship, 25 percent of whom have started their own solar business.