Info Session: Africa Sustainable Futures Awards 2026

[Jeff Wagner]
Welcome to this World Bank live information session about the Africa Sustainable Futures Awards. Thank you for tuning in from Africa and beyond, and thank you for sending us your questions in advance. We'll get to as many as we can later in the session and we're also tracking your questions live. The Africa Sustainable Futures Awards is one of the most exciting initiatives I've been involved in as Head of Special Projects at the Financial Times, and I'm delighted to be sharing this session in the company of Chinwe Binitie, co-head of Partnerships at the World Bank Group's Multilateral Investment Guarantees Agency, co-organizers of these awards with the Financial Times. It's also my pleasure to have with us senior representatives of three previous winners of these awards, Pierandrea Renna, Vice President of Pay-as-you-go Programs at Sun King, Nivi Sharma, CEO, Fika, and Rahul Chaudhary, Group Head of Human Resources at Spiro. We'll be shortly hearing more about these highly innovative organizations and the progress they've made since winning their awards in October 2024. But before we do that, I'd like to say a few words about this program, which is now in its third year. It's clear that Africa has one of the fastest growing regional economies in the world and yet much still needs to be done to address the challenges faced by many communities, particularly in fragile and conflict depicted areas. These awards showcase private sector solutions to these challenges that will boost job creation, human development and economic competitiveness. We focus on four key areas, energy infrastructure, critical non energy infrastructure, Agri business and manufacturing. We also feature an Innovation Showcase which highlights early-stage projects that have the potential with additional funding, to have a major impact. Why sustainable futures You may ask? The awards address not just current needs but also the well-being of future generations. At a time when it is more important than ever to build self-sustaining models for growth. The program has certainly captured the interest of many African entrepreneurs. We received more than 300 entries last year. This year's entry deadline is June 30. I'm going to give details later in this session on how to apply, The judging criteria, the entry criteria and all the information you need. There's no monetary prize, but as we will hear from these three outstanding award winners today, there is much to be gained from being recognized by our program. Pier, over to you first. In the inaugural awards in 2024, Sun King's Off Grid Solar Solutions won the Energy Access prize and also the overall Judges award for excellence. Please give us a snapshot of your operations and the impact your awards have had.

[Pierandrea Renna]
Thanks a lot Jeff. It's a pleasure being here and I am glad to speak about Sun King a little bit more. Sun King is the largest off grade solar company operating in Africa and Asia. We have so far deployed over 30 million of our products. These are solar home systems of different sizes and today we are operating at the deployment rate of 350,000 units every month. And the financing aspect of our business is crucial to improve accessibility and target the key issue of affordability of the solar kits that we deploy. So the financing aspects allow aspect allows us to deploy these units, these products pretty effectively without having a significant impact on customers wallets. And so far we have almost got into $2 billion in financing deployed over the last seven or eight years. And this has had an incredible impact on the rural and off grid populations and consumers who are, just like you and I, having the need for access to energy and a service that works, products that works and service that works. We are now in 11 countries in in Africa and we keep on expanding. The pay as you go financing aspect of our business allows customers to have access to basic energy that's lights and phone charging for as low as 19 cents (USD) per day, which are then paid over a period of a few months. And after that is after the payment plan is over, then the customers fully own the product our target is really about. And our objective is really to make these solutions and access to clean energy as effective or more effective than the current energy sources that our customers are using. That could be kerosene, that could be just great connection as well as diesel generators to give some examples and to make it at a similar cost so that customers don't have don't feel the impact of, you know, a solar kit on their on their wallets. The Financial Times and the awards that we won in 2024 —that’s for Energy Access and the Judges’ Award for Excellence— have really given us a stage internationally, allowing investors both in Africa and outside of Africa, and commercial banks as well, to understand what this business is about first of all, and also to understand the commercial opportunity that lies in the work that we do. In 2023, we deployed our first secure local currency securitization in Kenya, and that was a groundbreaking achievement for us because it allowed us to de risk currency devaluation risks, as this was, as I mentioned, a local currency securitization. That was initially driven by a few DFIs—development finance institutions— such as FMO, OeEB, Norfund, and Trade Development Bank, with a couple of commercial banks present: Citibank and Absa Bank Kenya. That was the initial point for us to prove that there is financial viability in the work that we do. The awards that we were recipients of from the Financial Times really have given us this visibility, as I mentioned earlier, to the point where commercial banks directly reached out to us in the months and years to come about the possibility of deploying a similar securitization deal. And that’s what happened in 2025. In 2025, we had a larger securitization in Kenya of $156 billion. In this securitization, we had a much stronger presence of commercial banks —from KCB, Absa, and a few other commercial banks in Kenya— with the presence of the DFIs slightly reduced compared to the previous securitization. So this visibility, this stage that these awards have given us, has really, really contributed to allowing us to continue with our growth. We are now deploying, as I mentioned, 350,000 units a month. Back in 2024, we were at 200,000 units. And we keep on seeing this growth taking place. This has been an incredible opportunity for us to showcase our work and what we do at Sun King. We have very big ambitions. We are planning in the next five years or so to deploy an additional 50 million units, because our mission—our objective—is to make a significant dent in the energy access gap that exists today in Africa, where 600 million people still don’t have access to energy, and a lot more—over 1 billion—have unreliable access to energy. So, yeah, thanks, Jeff.

[Jeff Wagner]
Thank you! Nivi, when you won the Innovation Showcase in 2024, the name of your organization was Bridges to Prosperity. You’re now called Fika, and you’ve seen major expansion. Take us through your journey and the impact the awards have had.

[Nivi Sharma]
Yeah, Jeff, as you said, we won the Innovation Showcase Award, which was awarded to us as a result of us using real innovation, deep machine learning and artificial intelligence, to map the waterways of Africa. We kept seeing time and again that over the 800 bridges we had built around the world, very few of them seemed to have been built over water. If we looked at a traditional map—which obviously wasn’t true— it turns out that over 60% of Africa’s waterways and rivers are not mapped, or were not mapped. So we used all the learnings that we had from mapping one small country like Rwanda, which took seven years to do. But taking those learnings, and the learnings from Europe and the USA, which are very well mapped, comparing satellite images and combining them with deep elevation models to guess where waterways were. And when we did the ground truthing of that, it turned out that our models worked really, really well. What ended up happening with that was not only tripling Africa’s, but the global mapped waterways. So even places in Asia and Latin America—the waterways are notoriously badly mapped. And that’s what we won the award for. Since then, we have been building upon that innovation to really think about: if we know where the water is, and we had previously known where the travel paths are —people walking to schools, clinics, and marketplaces— then we can combine that data and now really start to predict where crossing paths should be. So we can cut down travel time for kids going to school, sick people going to clinics, pregnant women getting attended to, farmers getting to market, and so on. So rather than just building bridges, we’ve also realized that our mission is about safe arrivals, and enabling those safe arrivals by working with our government partners. The word “fika” in Swahili means to reach or to arrive, with the connotation of doing so safely. And that was part of the reason for the rebrand. In working with our government partners, the FT and World Bank award really was quite an eye opener. It helped reset our strategy and say that we’ve done so much work in prioritizing rural access. We have copious amounts of evidence about the rate of return on investment of rural infrastructure. We’ve invested so much in technical advisory services —teaching regulators and the private sector how to build safe, long lasting, climate smart, and low cost infrastructure. And then, what we really needed to do now was scream and shout about that, but also help governments find the financing. So what are the right kinds of capital stacks that we can deploy to make sure governments are able, once they’re willing, to invest in the right infrastructure, in the right place, for the right people? So it’s really been a wonderful experience since then —lots of growth, and we’re seeing a lot of governments leaning into the organization. The award suddenly gave a lot of credibility to the technology we’ve built and the deep underlying care that we have for rural communities. That’s shown through.

[Jeff Wagner]
Fantastic. Rahul, Spiro won the Resilient Infrastructure Award in 2024, and since then you’ve raised significant funds to expand your electric motorbike and battery swapping operations. Do you want to take us through that?

[Rahul Chaudhary]
Sure, Jeff, and thank you. It’s wonderful to be back on this platform, Jeff. I think when the World Bank and the Financial Times awarded us this Resilient Infrastructure Award, if I may say, we were just learning how to walk. And I’m very glad to share that probably now, when we’re having this conversation a year and some time later, we are poised to learn how to run. You rightly mentioned that since this award, we’ve done a successful round of funding, and I think the Financial Times had a role to play. It not only helped us with external stakeholders like investors, but in some ways it also reassured us that the direction we were taking was something valued on a global platform. So the journey has been wonderful. Let me spend some time building on what we’ve done since, and a brief introduction. Spiro is an energy and mobility organization with a technology first approach. Energy, because we own and manage a large battery swap infrastructure. We have close to 1,500 swap stations today, as we speak. They may go up to 5,000 swap stations by the end of this year alone. The number of transactions we are managing is enormous—close to 3,000,000 swaps a month. Riders come to our swap stations and become energy independent, and this really translates into real savings and real impact. Our customers are at the bottom of the economic pyramid, and the dollars in savings that we give them make a tangible impact on access to health, nutrition, better food, education, and other parameters of a good life. Moving on to mobility, we are the largest player in the two wheeler segment today. I think when we won the award, there were close to 20,000 bikes on the ground. Today, we are close to 100,000 bikes. Our target is to sell close to 150,000 bikes this year, and maybe a million units in the upcoming years. So we are really going aggressive. And I’m happy that the belief that the FT and World Bank showed early on has played a positive role. So that’s where the journey has been. Fantastic. Jeff, over to you.

[Jeff Wagner]
Thank you so much, Rahul. Chinwe, we’ve just heard from three award winning companies operating on the ground in Africa. From your perspective at the World Bank Group, what stands out to you about their business models, and where do institutions like MIGA and the World Bank Group as a whole make the biggest difference in helping companies like these scale?

[Chinwe Binitie]
Thank you, Jeff. And I want to say a big thank you to our awards winners for joining us today and for sharing your updates with us. You are all winners because your projects are so innovative, addressing real solutions with a great sense of purpose, and you’re ultimately making lives better for people in the markets you serve. From my perspective, I was inspired by all your stories. It’s also not lost on us that while you’re providing these services, you’re operating in very challenging environments. You’re dealing with policy and regulatory challenges, unstable geopolitical conditions, currency volatility, and climate pressures. I think the recurring message today reflects something we’ve always known —that there is great opportunity in Africa despite the noise on the surface. That’s part of the reason why we do these awards: we want to highlight and showcase the investment, entrepreneurship, and enterprise happening in Africa. So where does MIGA fit into all this? Well, first of all, for those who don't know, MIGA is part of the World Bank Group. We essentially administer the World Bank Group's guarantees platform. Our mandate is really to facilitate foreign direct investment. In emerging and developing economies, we do this by issuing guarantees that help investors against non-commercial risk. We expect investors to take commercial risk, but for the kinds of risks that investors cannot control against, we step in. So we provide guarantees that protect against, for example, currency inconvertibility. If you're able to take your money out of a country or if you're able unable to convert it into another currency, we step in with that. We cover damages and instances of war and civil disturbance. We cover instances where there may be cases of expropriation by a government. And we also cover breach of contract where an investor actually has a contract directly with the government. Another great thing about MIGA is that we cover projects in every part of the world and as long as it's a developing country. So obviously Africa is very important to us and we are very present there. We’re also present in Latin America and in parts of Asia as well. We're sector agnostic, so we work across sectors in energy, Agribusiness, finance and and so we're really here to help all kinds of investors in whatever business they choose to undertake. I will say since 1988, media has issued over $100 billion in guarantees across over 1000 projects in over 120 countries. We want to continue to help investors scale strong businesses in Africa. Thank you.

[Jeff Wagner]
Thanks, Chinwe. That's—absolutely. And we just love partnering with MIGA because it's really fascinating how important you are in the whole ecosystem of investing in Africa. I think this is a good time to look at some of the questions that have come in from our registered delegates. There's one which I think perhaps you could help answer generally, if you don't mind. This is from Shehu Idris Musa in Nigeria. Since this year's awards placed special emphasis on moving beyond traditional development models by mitigating risk and driving operational excellence, how heavily does the judging panel weigh a company's internal institutional capacity —such as strategic workforce planning and structured corporate governance— when evaluating the long term scalability of an initiative?

[Chinwe Binitie]
Hi Shehu, thank you very much for the question. It’s a great question, because you’re right: the capacity and operating capability of the investors that MIGA works with is something that we look at very carefully. It's something that's very important to us. And so, yes, when we look at applicants for these awards, we do look beyond sort of their commercial operations and we look at how their governance works and how they run the institution in general. It's important to us that they are mindful of environmental and social impacts of their work. We care that they're responsible in labor issues and labor conditions, how they treat their employees. We care that they have the right governance in place and that they play well in the communities that they're engaged in. So overall, we want to make sure that they're working in a sustainable manner and that their businesses are inclusive, that opportunities are maximized to include women to improve access in general. And so yes, we do look at all of that. From our perspective, no matter how robust a company is from a commercial perspective, you know, no matter what their business model is doing and how the business is performing, impact is a key aspect for us in the World Bank Group and at MIGA. And I guess we feel that these impacts are important not just for the success of the company, but also for the environment in which it's operating in. It's also important for scalability, right? The more efficiently a company runs, the more impactful, the more sustainable, the easier it actually is to scale the business in the country that it's in and across Africa. So we think it's a win-win situation when the company is doing well commercially as well as governance wise and institutionally and overall being a good corporate citizen. Thank you for the question.

[Jeff Wagner]
Absolutely. There's another question which I will answer. This is from Indra Narayan Shrestha in India, I think. Could you clarify whether individual researchers based outside the Africa region are eligible to apply, or is the Africa Sustainable Futures Awards limited to Africa based organizations and teams? Yes, actually, the awards are limited. In essence, we accept entries from Africa based organizations. If we receive an entry from outside Africa, we assume that it's because whoever is entering is investing in Africa or has operations in Africa, as with companies in Africa. But we don't accept entries from outside Africa that are not operational in Africa. I hope that helps. I'd like to use this as a segue back to our panel. I know that a lot of people watching are probably wondering: what makes a good entry? How can we make sure that the judging panel takes our entry seriously and gives us a chance? What do we have to include that really makes them look closely at our initiative? Pier, what do you think is crucial for an entry to succeed in this competition?

[Pierandrea Renna]
Thanks, Jeff. I think one of the most important aspects of the application is clarity —clarity on what the company is, what the mission of the business is, and what kind of problem is being solved. That is crucial for the application to be successful. In some cases—and that happens to me as well—whenever I have to explain what Sun King does, I dive deep into the details without giving enough context about the objectives of the business. That's a very important thing to keep in mind for the application.

[Jeff Wagner]
Indeed. Nibhi, what do you think?

[Nivi Sharma]
I very much want to echo what Pier just said. Especially with technical and innovative solutions, it's so tempting to go into the details and get into the weeds. You've really got to balance giving enough detail to show that you know what you're talking about, while also showing enough passion and the bigger story. What helped us was that it was very easy to envision the scale of the impact of what we were doing and the innovation behind it. Balancing storytelling with passion is really important —bringing it down from “this is our intervention” or “this is our technology” to what this actually means for the end user you're trying to serve. I remember, Jeff, when we first saw this award, half of our team said, “No, I don't think we're going to win this. Let's not waste our time. This is for the private sector—we don't quite fit.” My recommendation is: if you think you're doing good work, or you know you're doing good work and having real impact, and you're pushing forward the sustainability agenda—whether environmental, social, or governance— do take a chance and apply. What you're doing in your corner of the world is probably more impactful than you think when you zoom out.

[Jeff Wagner]
Rahul, any advice from you?

[Rahul Chowdhury]
Sure, Jeff. I think Nivi and Pier have covered it well, but I'll build on what helped Spiro. Understanding and clearly articulating your problem statement is critical. For us, we were solving a macro problem—foreign exchange that countries spend on importing fuel— and also a micro problem, where those savings translate into real impact for our end customers. Defining the problem, bringing out the impact, and being bold about it is important. I think all the organizations that have won these awards are a testament to the kind of growth we've seen. Putting that into the nomination—how you see the future and how you plan to get there—really matters. That's pretty much it from my end.

[Jeff Wagner]
Thanks, Rahul. I totally agree with that. Having been part of quite a few judging meetings for these awards, it's clear that the judges really value detail —particularly the financial information we ask for at the top of the form. That's important so we can understand the size of an organization and its commercial viability. Answering each question clearly, digging into what makes the initiative unique, and conveying the passion and long term ambition for growth all really matter. To finish, a reminder to everyone interested in applying that you still have plenty of time. The entry deadline is June the 30th. Please go to africasustainablefuturesawards.live.ft.com and register and enter. You don't have to submit immediately. You can work on your application until it's ready, but please submit before June the 30th. The awards are open to all private sector organizations, but we're not focusing on the organization itself —we're focusing on specific projects, transactions, and initiatives. If an organization has multiple projects, you can apply for all of them. The judges will evaluate entries based on innovation, impact, replicability, financial viability, sustainability, and inclusion, and they will also look at operating models. We only accept initiatives launched in 2016 or later. Each category, apart from the Innovation Showcase, requires entries to meet a specific minimum revenue level. You can find those details on the website. We also publish the judging criteria used by the panel. We have an expert panel of judges, including leaders from MIGA and the Financial Times, as well as IFC, British International Investment, Africa50, and investment firms Norrsken22 and Capria Ventures. There is no monetary prize, but if you're shortlisted, your organization will be featured on the World Bank Group platform and in the Financial Times. Senior executives will be invited to attend the awards dinner in London and the FT Africa Summit happening the same week. You'll be in the room with leading investors, policymakers, and innovators shaping Africa’s future. There's a lot to be gained, so please don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions at africasustainablefuturesawards@ft.com. Thank you very much for joining.