In 2025, Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA) celebrates 25 years of advancing equitable, low-carbon development across cities in South Africa and the broader Sub-Saharan region. This milestone marks a quarter-century of pioneering work in sustainable energy transitions and a renewed commitment to shaping a future where African cities drive climate resilience, clean energy innovation, and inclusive development.

When SEA was founded, the national energy conversation was still in its infancy. SEA emerged with a clear purpose: to make energy work for people, a vision grounded in social equity, environmental justice, and the belief that local government, closest to people and responsible for service delivery and infrastructure, could be powerful agents of change.

Growing out of the University of Cape Town’s Energy and Development Research Centre (EDRC), SEA built on the new direction of energy as central to the country’s development challenges. As Megan Euston-Brown, SEA’s director and project manager, reflected,

“The focus was on energy for development, using energy to help solve the problems the country faced at the birth of democracy.”

While the EDRC had a strong rural energy focus, SEA was established to address the growing needs of cities, recognising that urban areas were where most South Africans lived and where the greatest development opportunities, and challenges, lay.

“The idea was to set something up for cities,” Euston-Brown explained. “The world was rapidly urbanising, and if we wanted to tackle big problems, we needed to go to where most people were living.”

This urban focus became the foundation of SEA’s mission: to make energy visible at the local level, embed energy thinking into governance, and support municipalities in leading sustainable energy action.

SEA’s early work focused on making energy visible in cities, an unprecedented effort on the continent. Through the Sustainable Energy for Environment and Development (SEED) programme, SEA built municipal capacity, influenced housing policy, and published the first State of Energy in South African Cities report in 2006.

“We used that data to drive sustainable energy and climate strategies for the big metros,” said Megan. But strategy alone wasn’t enough. “They were lovely strategies,” Megan reflected, “but nobody was implementing them.” SEA shifted gears to embed sustainable energy into City operations, starting with energy efficiency and solar water heating. Its approach was always pragmatic, aligning with national priorities: from efficient housing in the early 2000s to energy-saving programmes as capacity constraints grew.

The rooftop solar boom marked a turning point. “We still remember when people said rooftop solar wasn’t viable,” Megan recalled. “Then it hit ‘grid parity’, and the country went into loadshedding, which added further impetus and municipalities didn’t know how to handle it.” SEA responded by helping Cities integrate embedded generation into their regulatory systems and networks—work that now spans ten countries across Southern Africa, including support for tariffs and cost-of-supply structures.

SEA operates in the pioneering space, building capacity and approaches to tackle each new wave of change in a rapidly transitioning sector. SEA does this through working with municipal ‘champions’ and scale’s up lessons and builds new systems and capacity to enable systemic. Longer-term donor projects have been critical to support this. Through multi-year programs including the early British High Commission multi-year City Energy Support program, the Supporting African Municipalities in Sustainable Energy Transitions (SAMSET) and Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (COM-SSA), C40 Net Zero Carbon buildings program, SEA helped Cities develop emissions and energy data systems, energy-efficient building by-laws, and clean energy access frameworks.

“It’s not a quick fix,” Euston-Brown noted. “You have to work with people over the years and build real relationships. That’s the only way to effect change.”

Recent milestones achieved through the GIZ project Supporting Sustainable Energy in South African Municipalities Programme (SSESAM), launched in 2021 with SAGEN, include:  supporting 140 municipalities with embedded generation, and/or Cost of Supply study implementation capacity. This is done through training, specialist studies, tool and template development, and ongoing support and the establishment of a national network of municipal distribution officials.  47 municipalities now utilize the online small scale embedded generation application platform which is enabling faster approval and higher levels of registration in a sector that has seen the growth of 7GW of capacity installed over the past decade. From making energy visible to shaping regional policy, SEA’s legacy is one of persistence, partnership, and practical action.

From making energy visible to shaping regional policy, SEA’s legacy is one of persistence, partnership, and practical action.

Partnership is the backbone of Sustainable Energy Africa’s work. For over 25 years, SEA has built deep, collaborative relationships that have amplified its impact and helped drive meaningful change in cities across South Africa and beyond.

From its earliest days, SEA partnered with municipalities like Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, George, and Polokwane, supporting them to develop low-carbon strategies, renewable energy frameworks, and technical capacity for sustainable service delivery. “We’ve really leveraged what we can do through partnerships,” said Megan. “These relationships allow us to scale impact across the country.”

SEA’s collaboration with SALGA has been especially pivotal. “SALGA has been a core partner,” Euston-Brown explained. “We couldn’t have done this work within government institutions without their partnership. “The strong alignment between SALGA’s Energy Strategy and SEA’s mission has enabled this, along with the leadership and commitment of the SALGA energy staff.” Silas Mulaudzi, a Sustainable Energy Specialist at SALGA, added, “this partnership has been a success in many ways, including securing funders like GIZ and UK-PACT to support municipalities. Various training and skills development programmes were executed through this collaboration.”

SEA’s cost-of-supply work exemplifies the strength of its partnerships. What began as a workshop with SALGA evolved into a multi-stakeholder initiative involving the regulator, Eskom, leading academics, and donors like GIZ. “The Regulator came with us,” Euston-Brown recalled. “Their capacity grew, our capacity grew, and the municipalities’ capacity grew. That’s what a partnership is.”

SEA also works with technical partners like SunCybernetics and Urban Earth, and global networks such as C40 Cities. These collaborations bring expertise, innovation, and shared learning to SEA’s mission. And, of course, the donors.

“None of the donors we’ve had simply fund us, they’re engaged on the journey with us.” – Megan

From local government to global networks, SEA’s partnerships continue to shape policy, build capacity, and drive Africa’s just energy transition.

The reform of South Africa’s electricity distribution sector and the growing momentum around renewable energy have opened new pathways for transformation. “It’s an exciting future,” Euston-Brown explained, “because of the speed of change we’re seeing and the focus on this space. That provides a lot of opportunity.”

SEA’s vision for the future is bold: to work backwards from the idea of a fully renewable energy system and ask what needs to happen today to make that future inclusive and just. Central to this is the question of ownership, particularly for low-income communities. “How do we see low-income ownership of renewable energy? How do we create systems that enable that?” These are the kinds of challenges SEA is ready to tackle, knowing there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution.

South Africa’s energy grid, while complex and costly, also presents a massive opportunity, to redistribute wealth, democratise energy access, and involve all citizens in a clean, modern energy future. SEA believes the country can contribute meaningfully to the global conversation on just transitions by developing locally grounded, scalable models of inclusive energy reform.

But SEA’s future isn’t only about external systems. It’s also about how the organisation evolves internally. “We’ve always tried to ensure that what we develop outside, we also develop inside,” Euston-Brown says. That means fostering inclusive leadership, empowering staff at every level, and encouraging radical responsibility across the organisation. SEA is committed to remaining self-reflective, dynamic, and responsive to the emerging issues of the day.

“We don’t always know what the next issue will be,” she added. “But as it emerges, we will work into that space. There’s a dance we play with the external context, and that’s what keeps our work alive.”

SEA’s future direction is clear: to continue shaping energy systems that are not only sustainable, but equitable, participatory, and deeply rooted in the realities of the communities they serve.