When powering the Global South, profit shouldn't be the primary motive

Solar energy in an African village. Getty Images

To truly power the future of the Global South, we must start by shifting how we see it, not as a zone of risk, but as a frontier of growth, resilience and human capital.

Across Africa, Asia and beyond, a quiet transformation is under way. New solar farms, wind parks and battery energy storage systems are beginning to appear in places long considered too remote or too risky for large-scale investment. Each project is more than an engineering achievement; it is a statement that the Global South is not peripheral to the climate transition, but central to it.

When a single power plant lights up hundreds of thousands of homes, the impact is not measured only in megawatts. It is measured in schoolchildren able to study at night, hospitals storing medicine safely and farmers irrigating without diesel.

The UAE has lived this story before. In just a few decades, it has transformed from sand to smart cities, powered by a clear vision and bold investments in infrastructure. Today, the country is extending that lesson outward, becoming not only a source of capital but a hub of climate leadership.

In this context, the UAE has recently broken ground on a 50-megawatt solar power plant in Sakai, Central African Republic. Once operational, it will supply clean electricity to more than 300,000 households and offset over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

So, it is not just the laying of steel foundations for a solar power plant, but the laying of a new blueprint for how we approach investment, infrastructure and long-term development in regions brimming with potential. Access to energy is about unlocking productivity, enabling economic participation and sustaining livelihoods.

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Just weeks before, preparations were finalised for a transformative solar project in Madagascar, where clean electricity will soon reach tens of thousands of homes. Earlier initiatives in Chad signalled the same principle: enter early, build with local partnership and commit for the long term.

Through the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, and strategic partnerships with Global South Utilities, which establishes power plants in the developing world, Emirati investment is reaching places that once lay far outside traditional financial maps. From East Africa to South Asia, UAE-backed projects are anchoring resilience, creating jobs, and showing that South-South co-operation is not aspirational but achievable.

What distinguishes this approach is not just money, but mindset: the willingness to enter early, the resilience to operate in complex environments, and the patience to wait for long-term outcomes rather than short-term returns. This is the DNA of sustainable investment.

These solar plants are part of that story. They connect the UAE’s vision with the hopes of distant communities. They show that clean energy can be a bridge, not just between nations but between futures.

The UAE has lived this story before. In just a few decades, it has transformed from sand to smart cities, powered by a clear vision and bold investments in infrastructure

In the global drive to invest in climate solutions, attention often gravitates towards middle-income markets that seem bankable on paper or already halfway there. But real transformation demands looking beyond the balance sheets and working in places where the potential is vast but under-recognised, and the impact of a single solar plant can change the trajectory of thousands of lives.

Projects in the Central African Republic and Madagascar are more than solar plants; they’re models. They are testing whether long-term infrastructure, built in close partnership with government, can anchor economic recovery and build resilience. From regulatory alignment to workforce inclusion, every decision has been embedded within a local-first framework.

It is not just panels and engineers that matter, but patience, respect and the long-term commitment needed to ensure that when the grid arrives, it stays, along with the jobs, the investment and the possibility of a better tomorrow.

We must rethink where we place our energy. We shouldn’t only do it in the places promising the fastest returns, but in the ones that demand, and reward, long-term commitment.

The conversation about energy should not be focused solely on megawatts, either. Really, it is about mothers giving birth in light, farmers cultivating with clean energy and towns rising with power and purpose. The story of development is being written in overlooked places, in the silence before electricity flows and in the opportunities that reliable power makes possible.

And perhaps that is where real leadership lives: not in building where it’s easy, but in building where it matters most.