Image: Elena Athwal speaking during Panel 3: Powering Africa’s Future: Scaling Renewable Energy for Sustainable Growth and a Just Transition
The Africa Sustainability Summit 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya was a brilliant event that showcased the depth of understanding leaders and sustainability experts had towards the importance of sustainability on the African continent. The event, hosted by the Center for Climate Justice in partnership with ICELIS Global, provided a brilliant platform for business owners to pitch their sustainability initiatives, underlining the growing understanding of the importance of sustainability to Africa’s future.
The summit featured:
🔘 A Welcome Address by Dr. Dahir M Hashim, Hon. Commissioner, Ministry of Environment & Climate Change, Kano State, Nigeria
🔘A Keynote Speech by Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director, UN Environment Programme
Our standout segment was panel 3 – Powering Africa’s Future: Scaling Renewable Energy for Sustainable Growth and a Just Transition. During this panel, Icelis Global Founder and CEO, Elena Athwal, spoke about Africa’s immense renewable energy potential and highlighted the fact that green bonds and development could play a vital role in Africa’s sustainable growth. She also recommended the creation of a Gulf-Africa Green Finance platform that could fuse the Gulf’s Islamic finance depth with African development priorities. A vital takeaway from her talk: Africa doesn’t need to reinvent green finance, it needs to integrate it”.