Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been charged to move beyond the development of policy briefs towards leveraging community trust in deploying bankable projects that positively impact communities and transform lives.
 
Research and Project Officer, Climate Change of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), Mr Nicholas Adeniyi, gave the charge at a webinar titled “From advocacy to action: CSOs as drivers of community energy” organised by BudgIT Foundation.

He argued that while CSOs currently operate only within advocacy, awareness, and accountability areas, operators should design strategies like products, become knowledge producers, project incubators, implementation partners, technology enablers, investment facilitators, and behavioural change specialists.    

Adeniyi emphasised that CSOs must leverage public credibility to drive development in communities. He observed that systemic issues such as lack of financing, weak or fragmented regulation, electricity tariffs, and infrastructure deficits have hindered progress in Nigeria’s energy sector. However, he said, through public trust in the work of CSOs, products that address the energy deficits in communities would be accepted, while acceptance of products will enhance investment decisions.
 
“The future of civil society in the energy sector will not be defined by the number of policy briefs we write, but by the number of communities whose lives improve because we transformed ideas into action,” Adeniyi said.
 
He believes that community energy is not simply about installing infrastructure, but about ensuring that energy is available, accessible, affordable, reliable, and scalable.    

Speaking on how CSOs can move community energy projects from advocacy to long-term sustainability, he explained that since the infrastructure needed to provide energy is expensive, the way to make it long-term is to localise it.
 
“It starts from education. First of all, people need to understand the technology and how to interact with it. So, you would see a lot of educated people. If you go to their homes, they have energy savers for everything. The second side is that you need to incentivise how to create a local economy, and how to fix it if there is a problem. Let’s use the e-cars, for example; the reason why a lot of people are not adopting an electric car is that if it has issues, there is no way to repair them,” he said.