By Thuku Kariuki, bird story agency

In 2020, a Kenyan cold-chain agricultural startup was declared the overall Cisco Problem Solver Challenge winner. In 2022, another cold-chain startup was awarded the prestigious Ashden Award.

These two enterprises, Savanna Circuit Tech and SokoFresh, have been helping the country's smallholder farmers solve the challenge of post-harvest losses through their chilling solar-powered systems. 

African farmers lose millions of kilograms of produce annually to post-harvest losses. This forces them to sell their produce quickly once matured, exposing the farmers to exploitation from brokers. Some 30%-40% of horticulture produce in sub-Saharan Africa does not make it to market, hindered by informal and unreliable supply chains, studies have shown.

Emmastella Gakuo and Percy Lemtukei founded the Savannah Circuit in 2017 after meeting at Rongo University in Western Kenya. They developed a solar chilling in-transit system to help save dairy farmers from revenue losses occasioned by milk spoilage. 

“I met Emmastella at university, and we were discussing how most of these dairy communities work hard, but see little profit. We wanted to use the knowledge we have academically, and our connections in the supply chain. That is how we came up with Savanna Circuit Tech,” said Lemtukei.

Their innovation is a solar-powered in-transit milk chiller that collects milk from farmers and transports it to the nearest bulk point. Their AI-enabled systems allow milk aggregation, traceability, and quality control. 

"We have mobile solar-powered milk chillers that can be mounted on basically any means of transportation, like on a motorcycle or a truck. The units come in various sizes and are portable to increase accessibility for more farmers. In places where there is not a lot of milk volume, we also wanted to have them onboarded into the system", said Gakuo.

The system can pre-cool milk to 5 degrees Celsius, not only preventing the transported milk from spoiling but also minimising the bulk centre's cooling energy requirements. This can cut the centre's energy costs by up to 30%.

SokoFresh, on the other hand, was started in 2019 after researching post-harvest losses and noticing limited cold storage facilities to prolong product life as one of the main challenges to small-scale farmers. 

"Farmers have the challenge of access to technology that can extend the shelf-life of their produce. Because of their inability to store their fruits, vegetables and herbs for longer than a day, they earn less, logistics costs are high, and vast quantities of food are wasted," said Denis Karema, CEO of SokoFresh.

To solve this problem, SokoFresh initiated a recruitment plan for farmers in different regions, installed cold-storage facilities in their locations and trained the farmers on best practices of post-harvest loss management.  

"Farmers are put onto a system, and we group them because when farmers are grouped, they're able to have synchronised harvests and we're able to have huge volumes of produce," said Karema.

The produce moves from the farms to the cold storage aggregation facility, and within two to three days, it reaches the volumes that the buyers need, and then it's taken to the buyers, he added.

Farmers are paid on the spot after their products are collected and earn between 20 to 40% additional income for their products compared to selling to brokers.

SokoFresh buyers include East African growers Kraft Foods, Best Tropical Fruits Ltd, and Twiga Foods. The company hopes to grow to over 200 cold storage facilities within Kenya and spread to the east African region by 2025. 

For Savanna Circuit, their Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge award came with US$100,000 prize money, enabling them to scale to 14 staff members, and they have now reached over 20,000 dairy farmers.

They have also ventured into the production of more value-addition equipment, including solar drying and fish feed production. 

"We are looking at expanding this business, of course, all the emerging markets, not just with solar cooling, but also most importantly, with solar drying," said Gakuo.

SokoFresh's Ashden award came with a grant of £25,000 (US$30,500).

"Winning the Ashden award for energising agriculture affirms the work that we are doing. It gives us the motivation to continue at it to make sure that we can provide the solution to millions of smallholder farmers that need it," said Karema.

The two initiatives have also had a broader community impact.

"We've also been able to create a lot of different jobs for both women and youth through milk transportation and cleaning of the chillers. And most importantly, we are most proud of our geo-location. This has enabled new collection routes to be much more efficient, meaning cheaper transportation costs, and reduced cost per litre of milk to consumers. At the same time, we are able to keep more money in farmers' pockets," said Gakuo.

bird story agency