Positioned as a high-leverage platform for delivery, the CSW70 engagement is designed to mobilize USD 20 million in catalytic capital to accelerate DoTheDream YDI’s Girls in Energy initiative—an integrated ecosystem that equips girls and young women with the skills, leadership capacity, and market-facing opportunities required to participate meaningfully in Africa’s clean energy transition. This funding is intended to unlock follow-on investment, strengthen implementation readiness, and convert policy alignment into tangible, community-level outcomes.

Across the continent, millions of households and small businesses continue to operate without reliable electricity—constraining productivity, weakening service delivery, and slowing economic growth—with women and girls disproportionately bearing the burden. By restoring power reliability, communities can extend learning hours, keep clinics functional, enable digital connectivity, and expand women-led enterprise activity. DoTheDream YDI’s programme addresses this gap by linking education, innovation, and employment pathways to community-scale renewable energy deployment—ensuring that energy access translates directly into measurable development acceleration.

A cornerstone of this approach is a 10MW solar mini-grid ambition, designed to expand access to clean, dependable power for households and small businesses, while creating green jobs for young people across installation, operations, maintenance, and local entrepreneurship. The catalytic funding will be deployed to de-risk early-stage delivery—supporting project preparation, community engagement, skills training, and implementation partnerships—so that mini-grids can scale faster and attract additional public and private co-financing. The initiative also integrates sport-for-development as a community mobilization and leadership engine, widening participation, strengthening safeguarding and social inclusion, and accelerating girls’ and young women’s skills development and visibility within the energy transition.