Designing an effective digital platform for industrial transformation requires more than technical expertise or market knowledge. It requires a deep understanding of the people who will use it, their motivations, constraints, and decision‑making realities. For the Industry Clean‑Tech Platform (ICTP), persona profiling was a central element in ensuring that the platform responds to real, practical user needs.

Persona profiling is a user‑centred design method that translates complex stakeholder groups into clearly defined, fictional profiles representing typical users. While personas are fictional by definition, they are grounded in real‑world observations, programme experience, and market analysis. They do not describe specific individuals, but rather consolidate shared behaviours, needs, frustrations, and objectives that exist across large groups of users. In this way, personas serve as reliable stand‑ins for real users throughout the design process.

For the ICTP, persona profiling was used early on to guide both the conceptualisation and the functional development of the platform. The EELA team identified a set of core user groups that play a decisive role in industrial energy transitions: industrial decision‑makers, technology providers, and energy or sustainability professionals working within companies. Each persona was developed to reflect the daily realities these users face when engaging with energy efficiency and clean‑technology solutions.

The industrial decision‑maker persona represents manufacturing leaders focused on productivity, competitiveness, and cost control, but often constrained by limited time and limited in‑house energy expertise. For this persona, the ICTP needed to offer clarity, credibility, and efficiency: easy access to validated technologies, trusted experts, and clear pathways to implementation. This informed the platform’s structure as a one‑stop shop, reducing fragmentation and simplifying decision‑making.

The technology provider persona reflects companies offering innovative, energy‑efficient solutions and seeking structured entry points into African industrial markets. Their needs shaped the ICTP’s emphasis on visibility, matchmaking, and institutional anchoring, helping to reduce market entry risks while connecting supply with genuine industrial demand.

A third persona captures the energy or sustainability professional working within industry, often technically knowledgeable but positioned away from final investment decisions. For this user, the platform had to provide technical depth, evidence, and success stories that support internal advocacy and strengthen business cases for energy‑efficiency investments.

Throughout the ICTP’s development, these personas were repeatedly used to test design choices, navigation paths, content organisation, and interaction flows. Features were prioritised based on how well they responded to persona needs, ensuring that the platform remained intuitive, relevant, and credible for its intended users.

By grounding its design in fictional personas that reflect real‑life users, the ICTP demonstrates how user‑centred methodologies can translate policy ambitions into practical tools. Persona profiling helped ensure that the platform does not simply present information, but actively supports the decisions, actions, and collaborations required to advance cleaner, more competitive, and more resilient industrial sectors across Africa.