Lesego Mosikare, Project Manager with Amila Africa, has urged Africans to reclaim ownership of their resources and strengthen unity, stressing that education and mobilisation remain central to the continent’s progress.
Speaking at the 2025 Africa Energy Week (AEW) in Cape Town, Mosikare said the continent has been trapped in a system that weakens its capacity to manage its own wealth. “For a long time, when it came to our access to natural resources, our access to just the day-to-day basic needs that we have, there’ve been a lot of limitations.
And the limitations are because we’ve been forced into a system that outsources. We’ve been forced into a system that tells us that our own resources, our own systems, our own pipelines are not necessarily strong enough,” she explained.
While acknowledging the dominance of men in decision-making roles, Mosikare welcomed the presence of women in the sector and praised efforts to ensure inclusivity.
“Most of the changemakers, most of the policy people are male. But the important thing is that it’s black males in the room. And then you’re seeing also the presence of women in the space and how Energy Week has really integrated and made sure that they give a platform to women, whether it’s women who are in the industry of energy on an education level, in the industry of energy on a commercial or whatever level.”
She emphasised that the summit’s real strength lies in the sense of a shared African identity and purpose, and that it was imperative to centralise resources as Africans, first and foremost, at the core of it all.
