Can you introduce yourself, your role, and your organisation?
I’m Tony Tiyou, Founder & CEO of Renewables in Africa (RiA). RiA is a virtual media and market-development platform that acts as an “eco-bridge” for businesses entering or expanding in Africa’s clean energy sector. We help clean energy companies, investors, and ecosystem stakeholders build visibility, shape market understanding, and accelerate partnerships through content, events, and strategic market engagement.
What problem are you working to solve, and why does this matter to you or your organisation?
We’re tackling a visibility and trust gap that often slows Africa’s clean energy progress: great solutions exist, but the right people don’t always meet at the right time, with the right information and confidence to act. That creates friction in investment, partnerships, policy alignment, and ultimately project delivery.
This matters deeply to me because Africa’s energy challenge is still a human one. Energy access and reliable power determine what businesses can build, what hospitals can run, what schools can offer, and what communities can sustain. If we accelerate the transition, we accelerate opportunity and dignity at scale.
How does impact shape the way you work or make decisions?
Impact shapes our work in two ways:
We prioritise initiatives that move from narrative to action, meaning not just “awareness,” but tangible outcomes like qualified leads, partnerships formed, investments progressed, and projects that move closer to deployment.
We stay grounded in integrity. In climate and development spaces, it’s easy for messaging to get ahead of reality. We try to make decisions that strengthen trust: highlight real work, real constraints, and real solutions, not hype.
Why did you choose to partner with or support Elliot for Water?
Because Elliot for Water makes impact simple and behavioural. I love that the model integrates climate/impact into an everyday routine, productivity, rather than treating it as a separate “CSR task.” That’s powerful: when impact becomes effortless, it becomes scalable.
Impact becomes scalable when it’s built into everyday behaviour, not treated as an extra task.
That’s why Elliot for Water stood out to us.
Also, the mission resonates with our work: bridging intention and action. You’re doing it through daily habits and funding clean water. We’re doing it through clean energy market development. The alignment is very natural.
From your experience, what is one barrier that still slows down the transition from ambition to real, on-the-ground impact?
One major barrier is the “last-mile coordination gap”: the space between big ambition and execution. Many projects stall not because the technology doesn’t work, but because stakeholders aren’t aligned early enough: developers, financiers, EPCs, regulators, local communities, and offtakers. Delays then compound: permits take longer, financing becomes harder, timelines slip, and confidence drops.
In practice, speeding up clean energy in Africa often requires more than solutions; it requires better coordination, trust, and credible information flow across the ecosystem.
Is there anything you’d like us to highlight, such as a project, initiative, or message that matters to you right now?
Yes. I’d love to highlight this message:
Africa’s clean energy future won’t be delivered by technology alone. It will be delivered by partnerships that combine credibility, local insight, and practical execution. If we can reduce friction between innovators, investors, and implementers, we can turn “potential” into projects faster.
And for RiA specifically: we’re expanding our work to support clean energy companies with visibility and market-entry positioning while also exploring practical ways AI can help small teams execute faster, especially around lead qualification, follow-up, and stakeholder engagement.
RiA is one of our valued Elliot for Water Pilot Program partners, turning everyday productivity into real water impact and getting visibility through our platform. If you’d like to be featured next and join the program for free, please fill in this form.