OPINION: Why Africa’s renewable energy transition needs to recognize informal climate talent

But behind the solar panels, wind turbines, and every other technology, lies a less visible story: the skilled human hands, many of them informal workers who are already enabling this transformation.

Think about the waste picker collecting trash and enabling circular economies, the self-taught community solar installer wiring up an off-grid village, or the urban farmer converting rooftops into climate-resilient organic gardens; from this, it is clear that the climate workforce already exists in one form or another. The problem is, we haven’t officially recognized them.

Despite their contributions, most of these climate champions remain invisible in national labour statistics, energy workforce plans, and policy frameworks.

Their expertise is hands-on and real, but undocumented.

Their innovations are solving today’s challenges, but their skills are uncertified.

And as a result, they are excluded from the very systems (education, employment, finance) that could help them grow their impact.

This is the silent failure of our skills and energy transition strategy: we’ve assumed climate skills must be created from scratch, when in fact, they’ve been growing in Africa’s informal sector for decades.

What we lack is a mechanism to validate, certify, and value these skills.

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) offers a transformative solution. It allows individuals to be assessed not on paper credentials but on what they can do.

It’s a bridge between informal experience and formal opportunity enabling garbage collectors, plumbers, electricians, technicians, farmers, artisans, and energy entrepreneurs to gain certification for their real-world expertise.

By mainstreaming RPL within national education and energy planning policies, we can achieve several things at once:

• Close the equity gap by bringing dignity and opportunity to those left behind by traditional schooling
• Accelerate climate adaptation by scaling already-proven skills embedded in communities
• Create inclusive labour markets that reflect the diversity of Africa’s workforce, especially youth and women
• Unlock finance and entrepreneurship pathways for informal energy actors whose access has been blocked by lack of formal credentials

The success of Africa’s renewable energy ecosystem depends on reliable installation, maintenance, innovation, and local ownership. Skilled local talent ensures faster deployment, lower costs, and higher project sustainability. Without RPL, the talent pool remains narrow, skewed toward the formally educated, often urban, male, and middle-class while missing out on the vast capabilities of rural and peri-urban communities.

Embedding Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) into the value chain helps unlock significant strategic advantages.

For example, it reduces hiring bottlenecks in remote areas by tapping into local talent already equipped with relevant skills. It enhances post-installation service quality and boosts customer satisfaction by ensuring that workers on the ground are both capable and trusted, and, it also enables the development of inclusive supply chains that draw strength from community-based expertise and relationships.

The reality is that the workforce exists, we just need to be willing enough to see their value and invest in scaling their potential.

A Just Transition is a Recognized Transition

We often say we want a just energy transition. But justice cannot exist where recognition is absent.

By elevating Recognition of Prior Learning, we give informal workers many of them women, youth, and rural innovators a way to participate fully in the green economy. We turn dignity into mobility, skills into livelihoods and climate ambition into real, grounded change.

The question is not whether Africa has the people to power the green transition. The question is: are we ready to recognize them?

For RPL to be effective, it must be embedded into national skills development policies, green jobs strategies, and energy investment plans, and not as a footnote in education reform.