Efficiency is not an abstraction; it is diesel that arrives on time and lights that stay on. "I focus on maximising profitability by boosting operational efficiency."
Written By Eyikojoka Diboku
Jide Pratt spent two decades moving fuel across West Africa's toughest supply chains.
Today, he moves something less visible but more lasting: trust between old energy systems and new ones.
His story matters now because Africa's energy transition will not be won by technology alone, but by people who know how to make markets, communities, and machines work together.
The Long Road Home
The depot gates at dawn look the same as they did twenty years ago; tankers idling, radios crackling, men in reflective vests checking manifests before the first trucks roll out.
Jide Pratt has stood in that noise more mornings than he can count, first as a young sales officer learning the rhythm of Nigeria's downstream oil trade, later as an executive deciding which routes, which retailers, and which reforms would move the needle.
Pratt did not arrive in energy by accident. Trained in Accounting at Ahmadu Bello University and later earning a postgraduate diploma in Financial Management from the University of Uyo, he built his career layer by layer: sales, marketing, trading, operations, supply chain, across employers such as Sahara, Forte Oil (now Ardova), and Conoil.
Executive training at Lagos Business School, Harvard, and MIT Boston sharpened what field experience had already taught him: efficiency is not an abstraction; it is diesel that arrives on time and lights that stay on.
What people who work with him describe, though, is less about spreadsheets and more about steadiness.
He is the person who stays calm when a shipment is delayed, or a market shifts overnight, the kind of quiet reliability that, in an industry built on volatility, becomes its own form of leadership.
A Career Built on Motion
"I focus on maximising profitability by boosting operational efficiency," Pratt has said of his approach, a line that sounds procedural until you see it lived out across three very different roles at once.
Today he holds three titles that would exhaust most executives: Country Manager at TradeGrid, COO at Aiona Nigeria, and Principal Consultant at Cotevis Energy.
Each role occupies a different corner of Africa's energy puzzle, and together they trace the arc of where the continent's energy story is heading.
Trading Fuel, Building Trust
Nigeria's downstream oil and gas sector has long been a study in scale without connection, with vast volumes moving through fragmented, often opaque channels.
TradeGrid, the digital platform where Pratt now leads country operations, was built to change that math.
The company has delivered over 100 million litres of petroleum products across Nigeria and Kenya, extended credit facilities to more than 120 retail marketers, and installed solar systems across more than 50 retail stations, folding renewable infrastructure directly into legacy fuel trade.
That last detail matters more than it first appears. Nigeria has the world's largest absolute electricity access gap, with roughly 90 million people, about 40% of the population, still lacking grid connection.
Into that gap, distributed solar has become less a lifestyle choice than an infrastructure necessity, with off-grid systems now accounting for an estimated 96% of the country's total solar capacity.
Pratt's dual role, moving fuel through TradeGrid while helping manufacture solar lighting at Aiona, places him at the exact seam where old energy and new energy are being stitched together.
At Aiona Nigeria Limited, where Pratt serves as COO, the company designs and manufactures LED and solar lighting products to close that access gap directly.
As Principal Consultant at Cotevis Energy, he advises on what the sector calls a "just energy transition", a term that, stripped of jargon, means ensuring the shift to cleaner power doesn't leave the people who need light the most behind.
"A just energy transition isn't a slogan; it is making sure the shift to cleaner power reaches the people who need it most."
What Comes Next
Pratt's near-term focus sits at the intersection of digital trade infrastructure and distributed energy access, expanding TradeGrid's technology-enabled trading tools for fuel marketers while pushing Aiona's solar lighting deeper into underserved Nigerian communities.
He is, in effect, inviting two industries that rarely speak to each other, traditional petroleum trade and renewable manufacturing, to share a roadmap.
For partners, that invitation resembles collaboration on financing structures, distribution networks, and policy advocacy for a transition that includes both grid and off-grid Nigerians.
For communities, it enables more reliable operating energy systems.
A Legacy Still in Motion
Pratt's twenty-year arc, from depot gates to boardrooms spanning three companies, reflects a broader truth about Africa's energy transition: it will not be won by choosing sides between fossil fuels and renewables, but by people patient enough to manage both responsibly.
His story is still being written in the space between old infrastructure and new possibility, proof that transformation in African energy often looks less like disruption and more like decades of steady, deliberate work.
