In development work, we say it all the time: build what people need.
On 22 October, I said something different. Need is not enough.
I was speaking on the "Finance That Reaches Communities" panel at the 2nd Niger Delta Climate & Technology Series (NDCTS), held at the Uptonville Oil & Gas Institute in Port Harcourt. Faith Azike moderated, and I shared the stage with a representative of HYPREP, the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project. Our host, Emeritus Professor Winston I. Bell-Gam, was in the room, and the session was streamed live to Middlesex University in the UK.
The question we were asked was how climate finance can reach local businesses and community groups. My answer started somewhere unexpected: with how we build.
Need is not the same as demand
The Niger Delta does not lack need. People need reliable power, clean water, cold storage for fish and safe ways to cook. Need is everywhere.
But a project built on need alone usually lasts as long as its grant. When the funding ends, nobody is paying to keep it running. The system breaks, the panels stay on the roof, and the community learns the wrong lesson: this does not work here.
So I offered two tests that must come before we build anything. Can people afford it? And are they willing to pay for it? Those are different questions. Something can be affordable and still unwanted. Something can be wanted and still out of reach. A solution has to pass both.
The proof is already in people's pockets
The good news is that willingness to pay is not a theory. Across the Niger Delta, households and businesses already pay for energy every day. They pay for petrol, diesel and generator repairs.
In my work with Lithium Battery Depot, one Port Harcourt restaurant, Fifi's Food House, cut its electricity bills by 60% after switching to solar. It has not run its generator since January 2026. The money to pay for clean energy was always there. It was going to the fuel station.
When people pay for something, they value it and look after it. The business that serves them can survive without waiting for the next grant. And each payment builds a record that a lender can trust.
Build with local feedback
Many solutions arrive in the Niger Delta already designed for somewhere else. They were built for different weather, different incomes and different ways of living. When they fail here, it is rarely the people who are the problem. Nobody asked them first.
Local feedback means designing with the people who will use a product, then listening and adjusting as you go. Ask the fish processor what she needs to keep her stock cold. Ask the market trader whether she wants to pay daily, weekly or monthly. Test small, learn fast, then grow.
This is how we try to work at CELI. SolarLearn starts online so that real learners can test and improve the course before it moves into training centres. Our agrovoltaics demonstration garden lets farmers see the idea working on real land before they take a risk on it.
Build community while you build
Feedback is not a survey you run once and file away. It is a relationship.
When people help shape a solution, something changes. They stop being beneficiaries and start being owners. They tell their neighbours. They point out problems early, because they want it to work. The first users become the first champions.
That is why I argued that we should build community at the same time as we build the product. The two grow together. A product without a community has to fight for every customer. A product with one is carried by it.
A ready market is what finance follows
This is where it comes back to finance.
Very little climate money reaches the people doing the work. In a briefing to the UN, IIED found that only 0.17% of climate finance even mentions being "locally led" or "community led".
We often talk as if the fix is to push more money towards communities. But lenders and investors do not fund need. They fund demand they can see. A community that has shaped a solution, tested it and shown it will pay for it is a ready market before launch day. That is the kind of risk a lender can price, and the kind of story a funder can trust.
So the path runs like this. Build what people can afford and will pay for. Shape it with their feedback. Build a community around it. That community becomes a ready market. And a ready market is what finance follows.
What we are taking forward
The NDCTS message now travels to COP31 in Antalya, from 9 to 20 November. If I had one sentence for that room, it would be this: the Niger Delta does not lack need; it needs solutions built with communities, so that finance has a ready market to follow.
At CELI, we will keep building that way.
Get involved
If you are a funder, lender, installer or community group working on clean energy in the Niger Delta, we would like to hear from you. Write to info@celi.org.ng.
Thank you to Impact Driver Nigeria and the NDCTS co-conveners, EnrichGeo Technologies, Art in the Garden City and Project ArCC. Thank you to Emeritus Professor Winston I. Bell-Gam and the Uptonville Oil & Gas Institute for hosting us, to Middlesex University for joining online, and to Faith Azike and HYPREP for a sharp and honest conversation.