Advocacy and Leadership in the African Energy Sector | Ifey Ikeonu

In the framework of the 7th World Forum on Energy Regulation (WFER), ICER Women in Energy and FSR teamed up to ‘give a voice’ to women professionals actively contributing to the event. In this podcast, Swetha Bhagwat (FSR) interviews Ifey Ikeonu, a successful energy policy and regulation consultant with over 25 years of experience. Ms Ikeonu discusses her role in various power sector reform programmes, highlighting the main pioneering efforts put in place to establish the regulatory framework for the electricity market of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Prior to her current position, she helped found the Nigerian Energy Regulatory Commission and was one of the first commissioners for ECOWAS. The ECOWAS region is low on access to energy but it is high on innovation and motivation. In this podcast Ifey discusses her career path and explains the importance of innovation and regulatory framework in the energy sector in order to attract investment to help build the sector. Later in the podcast she goes on to explain the large gender gaps that she has noticed in the energy sector. In a male-dominated sector, she acknowledges that her presence and leadership is unique. She notes that there are drastic gender imbalances in energy access and energy leadership specifically in Africa. Ifey actively empowers and mentors women and hopes to see more women leaders in the energy sector. She discusses two very different sides of the coin when it comes to gender and energy. On one side, years of working in the sector have opened her eyes to the massive lack of women’s representation and participation in the sector, especially when it comes to male dominated executive positions. On the other side, she stresses that the lack of energy access disproportionally effects nearly every aspect of women’s lives — from meeting their basic needs, like having electricity for food refrigeration and light for reading, to increasing their participation in the workforce and public life of their communities. Check out more podcasts like this one and learn more about the Lights on Women Initiative here: https://bit.ly/31bDjPY