Picture a hospital in Northern Nigeria running on solar power. A school where teaching does not stop when the sun goes down. A market where small businesses stay open and keep earning because the electricity is reliable. These are not imaginary scenes. They are the direct result of decisions made, deals negotiated, and programmes built by one woman over the course of two decades.
That woman is Damilola Ogunbiyi. And this week, she made history.
Ogunbiyi has just been named on the TIME Earth Awards, becoming the first Nigerian ever to receive the honour. She joins just six global figures recognised for their contributions to the future of the planet. For Nigeria, for Africa, and for everyone who has spent years watching her work, this moment feels both significant and entirely deserved.
Read: Damilola Ogunbiyi Makes TIME Earth Awards History
She Built the Foundation at Home First
Long before the United Nations, there was Lagos. And before Lagos, there was a young Nigerian woman who kept becoming the first woman in rooms that had never seen one before.
Ogunbiyi became the first female General Manager of the Lagos State Electricity Board. In that role, she oversaw the completion of five independent power projects that delivered over 55 megawatts of electricity to Lagos hospitals, schools, and government buildings. She also completed a five-megawatt decentralised solar project for 213 schools and clinics across Lagos State. These were not announcements. They were working projects that changed daily life for real people.
She then became the first female Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency of Nigeria, where she negotiated the Nigerian Electrification Project, a $550 million facility backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
The programme provided electricity access to over 8 million Nigerians, delivered more than 100 megawatts of decentralised energy, and powered hospitals, schools, and economic clusters across the country. She also created the Energising Economies Initiative, which set out to connect 1.2 million small businesses to uninterrupted power supply through off-grid solutions.
Every role was a first. Every role left something concrete behind.
From Nigeria to the United Nations, with the Same Mission
In 2020, Ogunbiyi moved to the global stage as CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General. The title changed. The mission did not.
Her focus stayed on the nearly 675 million people worldwide who still live without electricity, 90% of them in the Global South, and on making sure the global push toward cleaner energy does not leave those people further behind. She has been consistent and clear about this: the energy transition is not a policy exercise. It is about families, communities, and lives that improve when reliable power becomes a reality rather than an aspiration.
Under her leadership, Sustainable Energy for All has partnered with over 200 organisations, supported more than 100 countries, and helped secure over $1.6 trillion in energy finance commitments. Countries like Pakistan and Kenya are making real progress in renewable energy under frameworks she has helped shape. Nigeria continues to expand one of the world’s largest distributed renewable energy programmes, building directly on the foundation she laid during her time at the Rural Electrification Agency.
The thread connecting all of it is remarkably consistent. Identify a gap. Build something that fills it. Make sure it works for the people who need it most.
A Historic Honour and What It Actually Means
The TIME Earth Award places Ogunbiyi among just six individuals globally recognised for their impact on the planet’s future. She is the first Nigerian in the award’s history. That is not a small thing.
It also arrives at a moment when the question of who gets to lead global climate conversations has never been more important. Africa contributes the least to global carbon emissions but absorbs some of the heaviest consequences of climate change. Having a Nigerian woman sitting at the centre of those conversations, shaping policy, securing finance, and holding the world accountable, changes the nature of the discussion.
This latest honour joins the TIME100 Climate list from 2024, a Forbes sustainability feature, the First Class Order of Zayed II for her work at COP28, the Global Female Leadership Impact Award, and an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Recognition has followed her career consistently because results have followed her career consistently.
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The Lights Are Still Coming On
Damilola Ogunbiyi’s story is not finished. It is not even close to being finished. She is still negotiating, still building partnerships, still pushing for the 675 million people who need someone in those rooms fighting for them.
What the TIME Earth Award confirms is something her career has been saying for years. Africa is not waiting to be invited into the global climate conversation. It is already leading it. And Ogunbiyi is one of the clearest examples of what that leadership looks like in practice.
The lights are coming on. She has been making sure of that for a very long time.
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