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. It is one of the priorities Macky Sall brings before the United Nations with his candidacy for the office of Secretary-General.

A night that lasts for hundreds of millions. According to the International Energy Agency, access to electricity 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. Smoke from open fires kills millions of people each year, mostly women and children, according to the World Health Organization. A clean stove costs a few tens of dollars and changes a whole life; the obstacle lies in financing and distribution more than in the technology.

Solar changes the equation. The price of solar electricity has fallen 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 skip a stage that others took a century to cross.

What the Secretariat can carry. 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.

Experience in multilateral negotiation. Twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022 underpin these commitments. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.

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