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Wright Delivers Remarks at the Powering Africa Summit, Mar. 19, 2026

March 19, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:10:14

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered remarks at the Powering Africa Summit in Washington, D.C., in the Department of Energy’s upload of the March 19, 2026 event. Wright opened by saying “I love Africa and I love Africans,” and framed energy through two lenses: humans — the only reason to produce it is to make lives better — and math, meaning the investments that improve lives the most.

Wright objected that the summit’s map of Africa was covered in wind turbines and solar panels while oil, coal, and natural gas — which he said still supply 80 to 85 percent of the world’s energy, unchanged across his lifetime — did not appear. He called the Western approach of telling Africa how to power itself “paternalistic” and “neo-colonial,” and said the $10 trillion spent globally on wind, solar, batteries, and transmission provided 2.6 percent of global energy last year while raising prices where penetration was highest, as he stated the figures. Nothing Africa does on energy, he argued, will meaningfully affect global emissions, but energy choices will “massively” affect African lives — and he congratulated the summit on its focus on clean cooking fuel as the greatest return on investment. Wright also took part in a fireside conversation at the summit the same day.

Why it matters

Powering Africa is Wright’s clean-cooking and energy-access doctrine applied to a continent: the same argument he makes at the IEA, delivered to African energy leaders as an offer of partnership without conditions on fuel choice — the administration’s counter-model to climate-conditioned development finance.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s figures at the Powering Africa Summit, March 19, 2026 — hydrocarbons at 80 to 85 percent of global energy and the $10 trillion / 2.6 percent comparison for wind, solar, batteries, and transmission, as he stated them. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Delivers Remarks at The Powering Africa Summit - March 19, 2026” (official upload, embedded above); U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins a Fireside Chat at The Powering Africa Summit - March 19, 2026” (official upload of the fireside conversation at the same summit; remarks as delivered by Secretary Wright).