The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Energy Forum (AEF) are launching the "African Infrastructure of Tomorrow" competition, with a prize of $5,000. The competition aims to inspire the formation of innovative teams and ideas to transform today's utilities into a cutting-edge, futuristic, SMART, lively and renewable African public power grid.

The AfDB and EnergyNet, organizers of the AEF, have just founded the "African Utility of the Future" competition with a prize of $5,000.

The goal is to popularize the concept of " African Infrastructure of Tomorrow ", theme of the 2019 Leadership Forum of afDB-APUA CEOs.

This is to continue the concept of "The Second Wave of Electricity Sector Reforms" as part of the AfDB's Renewable Utilities Transformation (SUT) Program – a key element that will continue to guide its strategic goal of lighting and powering Africa ("Light Up and Power Africa").

The competition aims to inspire the formation of innovative teams and ideas to transform today's utilities into a state-of-the-art, futuristic, SMART, lively and renewable African public power grid. The idea is also to create a platform for current asset owners to come up with innovative, realistic, practical and feasible ideas so that they can replace existing public services one by one in the future. Its design will be based on the five pillars of the Renewable Utilities Transformation (SUT) agenda:

Submission Criteria

The competition started on 8 October and the deadline for submission is 6 November 2020. Team applications will remain anonymous, and the use of a team name is strongly recommended. As the aim is to solicit realistic and practical ideas regarding current African public services, only teams representing current owners of distribution assets will be allowed to submit their applications. These owners can be from both the public and private sectors, and work in a network, off-grid or mini-grid.

The finalists will be announced on November 11, while the winning team will be announced on November 13, the closing date of AEF 2020.