Webinar: when SDGs collide: energy infrastructure, decent work and inequality in Rwanda

This webinar, featuring Dr Ben Radley, Associate Professor in International Development at the University of Bath, will analyse how different SDGs relate to 1 another and reflect on the development puzzle that progress in some areas can lead to decline in others.

Between 2000 and 2025, Rwandaʼs electricity access rate increased from around 10 per cent of the population to 80 per cent. Drawing on empirical fieldwork undertaken in the country between 2023 and 2025, the session will focus on how this dramatic expansion of energy access and infrastructure (SDGs 7 and 9) has intersected with decent work (SDG 8) and inequality (SDG 10).

Benʼs research centres on the political economy of mining, energy and labour in the context of green transitions, with a focus on Central Africa and the Pacific region. He is the author of Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus, published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Before entering academia, Ben spent several years working for non-governmental organisations across a range of human and labour rights programmes in Eastern and Central Africa.