The inaugural YES! Youth Energy Day will take place on 10 November 2023, merging some of the biggest names in African energy industry, with some of the most talented and enthusiastic youth on the continent.
The event has been set up as a bridge between those who are seeking graduates and early career professionals to take their companies forward into the future, and those exact demographics who may not have seen energy as a viable career path until now.
This coming together of learning and opportunity will take place in a hybrid setting across Nairobi, Lagos, Cape Town and Cairo for an invited few, as well as online for all, via YES!’s dedicated Beyond Privilege platform.
YES! Youth Energy Day is a world-first, and will host hundreds of people in person across all four corners of Africa; with the potential for thousands more virtually. With the support of foundational partner, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), this is an opportunity for both public and private sector recruiters to showcase their ambitions for a cleaner future, and the opportunities they have for young Africans to join their organisations.
The opportunities on offer span graduate programmes and early career job openings, showing that the future of energy is being considered, now. The scale of opportunity will be clear to the young people present, largely thanks to the profile of the organisations in attendance. Nedbank CIB, Siemens Energy, GE Vernova, Schneider Electric, Standard Bank, Huawei Technologies, and South Africa’s IPP Office are just a few of the partners representing the industrial, financial and policy strands of energy that are all seeking fresh ideas and talented young professionals.
In total, there will be 16 recruiting partners present at YES! Youth Energy Day, with four in each city. Demonstrating to those in attendance and streamed to thousands more online, sessions will seek to promote ‘Tomorrow’s Jobs Today’, emphasising where Africa’s energy sector is in its evolution, and the sheer diversity of jobs and skills its future progress will require. A series of Graduate Recruitment Spotlights will provide more individual context from the recruiting partners.There will also be panel sessions, talks and advice from other speakers and partners as numerous potential career paths are laid out and explained.
“The majority of youths around the world don’t consider the energy sector as a possible career path simply because they’re unaware of the opportunities or the hugely diverse and exciting jobs that are out there. Through the Beyond Privilege Platform, YES! Youth Energy Summit, and YES! Youth Energy Day, we can change that,” said Simon Gosling, Managing Director, EnergyNet.
From engineering to finance, tech to legal, IT and even government, the energy sector is a diverse and broad space foryoung professionals who may not have considered it as a career until now. By hearing from leading companies YES! Youth Energy Day will change how brilliant young minds across the continent think about energy access, and energy as a career.
YES! Youth Energy Day represents the next stage of the broader YES! journey which began at the Africa Energy Forum 2022 in Brussels. This year, in Nairobi, more than 1,000 delegates from 28 countries saw its sessions expand, and its ambitions scale. With an ultimate goal of reaching 100 million people across Africa over the next 10 years through a network-based approach, now is the time for the continent’s biggest employers, and the cities of Cape Town, Nairobi, Cairo and Lagos, to welcome a new generation of African energy leaders.