Tombo Banda never set out to be an energy pioneer. Trained as a mechanical engineer at Imperial College London, with an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development from Cambridge, she began her career advising public and social-sector clients across Africa at McKinsey's Addis Ababa office.
It was there, working on projects spanning Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and her home country Malawi, that she confronted a stubborn statistic: over half a billion people across sub-Saharan Africa still lack reliable electricity.
That realisation pulled her from strategy consulting into the engine room of energy access.
Today, Banda is Director of CrossBoundary's Mini-Grid Innovation Lab in Nairobi, Africa's first R&D fund dedicated purely to testing new business models for mini-grids.
Her work targets a hard truth: mini-grids, small solar-powered systems serving a few hundred households and businesses, are technically sound but commercially fragile, since rural consumption rarely generates enough revenue to attract private capital.
Banda's answer is a "bottom-up" fix. Rather than waiting for policy alone to close the gap, her team builds mini-grids in communities to boost revenue, thereby increasing the volume of energy people actually consume.
The scale of the challenge is staggering. The World Bank estimates 160,000 mini-grids are needed to achieve universal energy access; however, only around 3,000 exist today, requiring roughly $91 billion in investment.
Banda also champions policy fixes for renewable imports and streamlined licensing, arguing that removing friction for governments and investors is just as vital as innovation on the ground.
