Yariv Cohen is an honoree for the 2025 YPO Global Impact Award. The award focuses on YPO members making impact outside the organization that is both sustainable and scalable, affecting people, prosperity, peace or our planet.
Yariv Cohen is not in the business of wasting time. He can’t afford to; he’s working toward an ambitious goal. And while the deadline is self-imposed, the stakes are incredibly real: He is committed to bringing power to 100 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030 — and five years is going to go fast.
According to Africa Energy Outlook 2022, 600 million people (43% of the continent’s population), lack access to electricity. Bridging this energy gap and connecting the poorest people on the planet to power is the premise on which Cohen, a YPO member who is one of the organization’s 2025 Global Impact Award honorees, co-founded Ignite Energy Access with his wife, Angela Homsi.
A climate tech social enterprise that operates across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ignite develops, finances and facilitates a decentralized and sustainable infrastructure of solutions for deep-rural communities — those commonly referred to as “last mile.” This includes clean cooking solutions and innovative solar-powered electricity, irrigation systems and internet access.
— Yariv Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder Ignite Energy Access share
Since Cohen, who serves as CEO, first launched Ignite in 2014, more than 2.5 million people have been impacted by the company’s efforts, thanks to more than 3,500 agents on the ground helping to produce 13.5 megawatts of electricity.
From barriers to breakthroughs
Cohen was working on a global carbon emissions reduction project when he visited Rwanda 12 years ago.
“I saw the people on the streets, the families without power. They had kerosene, but they couldn’t even bring water in at night and the kids couldn’t study,” he remembers. “We looked at it and said, ‘Why is it like this?’”
For Cohen, a serial entrepreneur in the tech space, this served as a call to action. With a career spanning impact investing and thought leadership, he has collaborated with global corporations, governments and multilateral organizations to drive meaningful progress in climate and energy solutions.
“Every place has its complexities. So doing impact business embedded within communities is not easy,” Cohen says of launching Ignite. “But Africa is just the same as everywhere else I’ve worked, and I’ve worked in 20 countries.”
He knew addressing the daily challenges of these remote and underserved communities would require strategic foresight and an unwavering commitment to extreme affordability. So, he got to work, remaining hands-on in the development of Ignite’s proprietary technologies.
Without stable electricity, people in sub-Saharan Africa often rely on temporary solutions such as unreliable battery-operated torches or dangerous kerosene, whose fumes can cause respiratory problems. Both solutions are inadequate and costly, leaving families with limited funds for essentials such as education and food.
Ignite tackled this challenge by creating affordable solar home systems, allowing their customers to reduce their energy expenses by as much as 75%. Affordable and consistent energy in homes, of course, includes lighting, but it also includes a way to charge mobile phones and power small-scale appliances, opening up more opportunities for entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency. To date, they’ve helped save USD61 million on energy expenditures.
Another challenge: 85% of Ignite’s customers are smallholder farmers who rely on fields of cassava, beans and sorghum to generate income and feed their families. But the irrigation methods featured rainwater and expensive, pollutant diesel pumps.
Cohen and his team created solar-based irrigation systems designed for easy deployment and mobility. These systems, which serve entire collectives of farmers, ensure constant irrigation across fields, increasing yields by 300% and harvesting seasons by up to 50%. Now the systems produce 17 million liters of water daily.
By reducing their client’s dependency on fossil fuels, Ignite has significantly cut air pollution, improved public health and mitigated 812,390 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
That last statistic is especially critical because the communities he works with contribute the least to global emissions yet are disproportionately hurt by the consequences. Ignite’s solutions are helping these communities become more resilient and self-sustaining.
Not just power – but a path forward
It’s easy to measure Ignite’s success by staggering statistics like hundreds of thousands of greenhouse gases saved. But it’s the more human numbers that truly tell the story of the company’s unique impact, and that will ensure its mission is successful long into the future.
To start, Ignite hires locally: 98% of its employees work where they live, translating to more than 3,500 local jobs created. Local employees can work their way up and are an active part of maintaining the various systems’ capabilities.
Cohen says they work with a community’s chief, mayor or village elder – whoever can help Ignite find those willing to work and make their lives, the lives of their families and communities better.
— Yariv Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder Ignite Energy Access share
Beyond lighting up homes and an increase in agricultural productivity, Ignite provides families with solar-powered internet connectivity, unlocking educational and economic opportunities that can uplift entire communities and foster economic growth.
“Our mission is clear, and because everybody in the governments we work with has family in a rural area, that benefits our cause,” he says. “They can see the impact of what we do closely, so we have a lot of goodwill and support.”
Cohen understands that every community is different, so every solution is too.
Ignite recently partnered with global organization We Care Solar, to deploy solar kits in 60 health clinics in rural Sierra Leone. With almost 70% of maternal deaths globally occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, the kits provide medical teams with light and vital medical equipment to improve conditions for women during pregnancy and labor.
For Cohen, countless faces and life-changing stories stay with him, but his local employees benefit the most from Ignite’s mission — and rightly so.
“The best part of our business is going to the families and connecting their homes and seeing the children smile,” he says. “Our installation guys have the best job in the world. You go into a dark house and watch it become a happy home.”
Mission meets momentum
For Cohen, setting up Ignite as a for-profit business was key to ensuring he could meet his 2030 goal.
“We have a big goal and big sense of urgency. So we need to be able to mobilize a lot of people quickly,” he says. “For me, it’s not purpose or profit; it’s purpose AND profit. It’s not just that this can work, it’s that it can work better.”
Ignite Energy Access actually started as a YPO Rwanda Action Forum project and now is an internationally recognized company known for its results-based financing model and public-private partnerships with governments and international agencies that allow them to drive large-scale impact.
In April 2024, Ignite acquired Nigerian clean-tech startup Oolu, which expanded its reach into West Africa, increasing its capacity to serve 800,000 additional people. In January 2025, Ignite signed an agreement to acquire ENGIE Energy Access, which will eventually more than double the company’s impact across the continent.
“This accomplishment goes far beyond electrification. It’s about creating opportunities, improving education and health care, supporting gender equality, and fostering economic growth in the communities we serve,” Cohen says of the acquisitions. “It underscores our mission to transform lives and drive sustainable development through clean energy.”
Time isn’t slowing down, and the problem isn’t getting smaller, yet Cohen’s commitment isn’t wavering.
“I think once you start doing mission-driven businesses, you never go back, because, why would you? You just start. And then you do,” he says. “Whether I know what I’m doing or not will be determined if I connected 100 million people. That’s my goal. Everything else is a failure for me.”
