ACEN at the UN: Lady B Bless Heads to HLPF 2026

I've spent years making the case, in boardrooms, at community meetings, in grant applications, in policy papers, that African and Caribbean voices must not just be invited to the conversations about our energy futures. We must be shaping them. This July, that conviction takes me to the United Nations.

From July 7 to 15, 2026, I will be in New York at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), attending as Co-Chair of ACEN, the African & Caribbean Energy Network. My fellow Co-Chair Franco Bonghan will be there alongside me, as will Tawara Group's CEO Madingue Djasro, P.Eng, PMP.. We are going together as a team with a clear purpose: to ensure the energy realities of Africa and the Caribbean are not just referenced in the documents; they are heard, understood, and acted upon.

What This Moment Means to Me

I want to be honest about what it feels like to walk into the United Nations as Co-Chair of an organization built specifically to center African and Caribbean energy advocacy at the global level. It is not a moment I take lightly.

The communities I come from and the communities ACEN exists to serve, have spent too many years being talked about in development forums rather than talking in them. Our energy crises have been documented in reports, cited in presentations, and included as line items in financing commitments that often never materialize at the community level. What has been missing, too often, is our presence in the rooms where the frameworks are built and the decisions are made.

The HLPF is one of those rooms. And this year, with SDG 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all under in-depth review, being present is not optional. It is the work.

Why African and Caribbean Voices Must Be in This Room

Africa and the Caribbean face disproportionate energy poverty — that is not a controversial claim. It is a documented reality. Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. Across the Caribbean, island nations pay some of the highest energy costs in the world, with households in Jamaica facing electricity tariffs that consume a devastating share of already-stretched household incomes. In Guyana's interior, in rural Malawi, in coastal Mozambique, energy insecurity shapes every other dimension of daily life.

And yet, the policy frameworks that govern energy financing, the language in international agreements, and the criteria attached to climate funds are still shaped disproportionately by voices from outside these regions. The result is frameworks that are technically sound but often disconnected from the operational realities, political economies, and community priorities of the places they are meant to serve.

At this year's HLPF, 36 countries will present Voluntary National Reviews of their SDG progress. Among them are nations whose energy access challenges are urgent and specific: Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania, and Togo. These are not abstractions to us. These are the countries whose communities ACEN works to serve, whose policy environments we track, and whose energy futures we are working to shape.

For those countries to present their VNRs and not have African and Caribbean civil society and advocacy organizations present to contextualize, challenge, and build on that record, that is a gap we are going to help close.

What ACEN Is Advancing at HLPF 2026

ACEN's mission is to advance clean, affordable, and accessible energy for African and Caribbean communities, and that mission maps directly onto SDG 7. We are not attending the HLPF as observers. We are attending with intention.

Here is what we are going to advance:

• Accountability for VNR commitments. We will be tracking what the African and Caribbean nations presenting VNRs say about their energy access progress, and we will be part of the civil society conversations that ask hard questions about the gap between commitments and outcomes.

• The financing gap. International climate and development financing for energy access in Africa and the Caribbean remains chronically underfunded relative to the scale of the need. We will be in the conversations where that gap is named — and pushing for it to be addressed, not deferred.

• Community-centered energy policy. The communities most affected by energy poverty have the deepest understanding of what solutions work and what don't. ACEN advocates for policy frameworks that center community knowledge and community benefit — not just technology deployment and megawatt targets.

• Visibility for the regions we represent. Sometimes, the most important thing advocates do at a forum like the HLPF is simply to be present. To be in the hallways, in the side events, in the meetings, and to make sure that Africa and the Caribbean are seen as active participants in the global energy conversation, not just beneficiaries of it.

Four Years Left. No Time to Wait.

The 2030 Agenda is four years away. That sounds like a runway. It isn't. For communities that are still waiting for their first reliable electricity connection, for island nations still building their grids with imported diesel, for families still cooking over open fires because clean cooking solutions haven't reached them, four years is not long. The gap between where we are and where SDG 7 calls us to be is not going to close on its own.

It closes because people show up. It closes because the voices of affected communities find their way into the rooms where global frameworks are built. It closes because organizations like ACEN exist to carry those voices forward and because the people running those organizations refuse to sit on the sidelines when the stakes are this high.

I am proud to be going to New York as Co-Chair of ACEN. I am proud to be going with my Co-Chair and with the Tawara team beside us. And I am going knowing that every conversation we have, every moment we are present in that forum, is a moment we are representing millions of people who deserve to have their energy futures taken seriously at every level of global governance.

We will be in the room. Follow along, and if you believe what ACEN believes, let's talk about how you can be part of this work.