Most people usually describe Africa’s energy problem as a supply issue—a lack of power plants and grid capacity. However, Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani has spent 18 years arguing that a capital shortage drives the problem just as much, and that the continent holds far more idle capital than most people realize.
Nearly Two Decades Moving Energy Capital
As CEO and Managing Director of EnergyInc Advisors, Akinkugbe-Filani has built her career originating transactions and structuring financing for African energy, oil, gas, and infrastructure projects. Along the way, her work has helped mobilize more than $8 billion in investment.
She also sits as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of All On, Nigeria’s leading off-grid renewable energy impact investment firm, where she serves on the Board Investment Committee, putting her inside the room where decisions about which off-grid energy businesses get funded, and which don’t, actually get made.
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A Message Timed to the World’s Biggest Climate Stage
In November 2025, during COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Akinkugbe-Filani published a widely distributed op-ed with a clear message for the global climate finance community. She argued against forcing Africa’s energy transition to mirror wealthier economies that are phasing out fossil fuels, emphasizing that millions of Africans still lack reliable electricity.
The continent holds more than $900 billion in pension, insurance and sovereign assets that remain largely absent from energy infrastructure financing.
Her prescription, strengthen grids, scale renewables, and phase out transitional fuels only as capacity deepens, was paired with a call for global climate finance to reach at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2030, with a much larger share going to adaptation rather than mitigation alone.
A Voice That Reaches Beyond the Boardroom
Akinkugbe-Filani’s influence extends far beyond deal rooms. She anchors Business Week on Arise News, where she translates energy and macroeconomic policy for a broad business audience and interviews leading figures, including African Development Bank President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina.
She co-hosts and produces the Women in Energy Network (WIEN) podcast, and co-founded SpeakHER, an initiative built to sharpen African women’s communication skills in professional and public settings.
That combination, deal-maker, board director and broadcaster, has made her one of the continent’s more distinctive voices in energy: as comfortable structuring a financing term sheet as she is explaining why it matters to a television audience.
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Recognition Built Over Time
The recognition has followed a steady, decade-plus career rather than a single breakout moment: African Energy Analyst of the Year in 2015, the UK Energy Council’s Top Female Influencer in Energy in 2020, and The Boardroom Africa’s Women to Watch in the Boardroom in 2022.
She remains a regular speaker at major energy gatherings across the continent, including NOG Energy Week and African Energy Week. There, conversations about financing Africa’s power future consistently echo her longtime message: solve the capital problem with Africa’s own capital, and the supply problem becomes much easier to solve.
At RefinedNG, we spotlight Africans whose work is shaping the systems and industries that will define the continent’s future. Follow RefinedNG for more stories on the people building what comes next.