At nightfall, in thousands of villages, the school closes because the light leaves with the sun. Close to 700 million people still live without electricity, and more than two billion cook with wood or charcoal, at the cost of their health. Macky Sall brings this question before the United Nations with his candidacy for the office of Secretary-General.

Access to electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, access has advanced everywhere except where needs grow fastest. Without power, the clinic cannot keep its vaccines cold and the sewing workshop puts its machines away before dark.

Cooking, an ignored domestic danger. Women and children are the first victims of smoke from open fires, which kills millions of people each year according to the World Health Organization. A clean stove costs a few tens of dollars, and its spread runs up against financing and distribution more than technology.

The price of solar. Solar electricity has seen its price fall by more than half in ten years. A village can light itself without waiting for a national grid that will take twenty years to arrive. Decentralised generation lets the least-equipped countries leap across a stage that took others a century.

Financing off-grid power. An off-grid solar project rarely finds its financing, because its customers are poor and scattered. That is where the Secretary-General can weigh in, by mobilising the development banks and keeping Sustainable Development Goal 7 on the agenda of the major conferences. Power plants are built with the money and the engineers of states. It falls to the Secretariat to count, year after year, those who still live in the dark.

A head of state's experience in the service of energy. To move Goal 7 forward, President Macky Sall draws on twelve years as head of state and on the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The same experience gave its form to the vision statement filed with the United Nations: its proposals, development conceived together with peace and security, a renewed multilateralism, a better-governed Organization, are written there as obligations.

Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.

The International Energy Agency's reports on energy access and Sustainable Development Goal 7 are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net