Community Cooling Hub

• Globally, 526M tonnes of food is lost due to lack of refrigeration, and 25% of vaccine doses are wasted globally due to cold-chain failures
• Agriculture plays an important role in Kenya's economy, accounting for 60% of employment and 65% of exports. However, Kenya’s food deficit persists with around 36% of the population being 'food insecure'
• An estimated 30-40% of fruits and vegetables worth US $140M are lost annually, mainly due to poor post-harvest practices and lack of a robust, end-to-end cold chains
• For Kenya to meet its SDGs, it needs a 3,391% increase in deployed cooling technology, which could lead to a dangerous increase in highly polluting refrigerants (HCFCs and HFCs) and emissions from energy use
• If cold chain is delivered following conventional fossil fuel-based technologies and highly climate polluting refrigerants, it can hamper Kenya’s efforts to reduce its emissions by 32% by 2030

The project adopted a needs-based systems approach to demonstrate and upscale the CCH model as a low-carbon development strategy in Kenya. This was achieved through a number of activities:

• Conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and mapping of cooling needs across the three counties (Kitui, Kiambu and Homa Bay) to inform the design of the community cooling solutions
• Designed and validated models for sustainable cooling hubs near farms as the anchor for innovative, flexible systems to affordably meet a portfolio of rural community cooling needs including food, health/vaccines, and comfort
• Produced policy briefs analysing appropriate policy interventions and financing mechanisms (e.g. pilot a public-private community partnership) to support replication and scale-up CCHs
• Developed and disseminated knowledge products, guidelines, and assessment tools to relevant stakeholders and community members through a range of interactive sessions

The project was highly participatory by design, ensuring GESI mainstreaming at every phase. Most importantly, it used a bottom-up approach where the cold chain and cooling needs of the vulnerable and marginalised groups (particularly women and youths) were captured using the needs assessment framework.

The lack of cooling access has an equity dimension. Women comprise nearly half of the agricultural workforce in sub-Saharan Africa and play a key role in feeding the world’s surging population. Women farmers are responsible for 90% of the processing and 80% of the storage of food. The development of a sustainable cooling model would contribute to emissions reduction, but also poverty alleviation by creating further income generation opportunities for women, youth and smallholder farmers while improving food security, health and wellbeing.

According to the World Bank, price and lack of access to credit are major challenges impeding smallholder farmers' (particularly women and youths) access to clean (e.g., solar-powered) cold storage facilities. The project sought to address these barriers by developing a business model that focuses more on maximising social and environmental benefits, designed as a ‘servitisation’ model. Through a pay-as-you-go payment system, women, young farmers and small agri-businesses who have minimum assets can more easily access cold chain services. We could also increase access for all small farm holders and agri-business entrepreneurs who cannot take risk of high investment on cold chain equipment and infrastructure.

The UK PACT project has helped counterparts to develop resource capability and capacity to address barriers and constraints to clean growth. However, to capitalise on the skills and knowledge acquired and pursue further opportunities for greater climate ambition, more effort will be needed, in particular:

• Data collection tools should be improved to better capture differing needs of target communities, especially by verifying data from multiple sources
• Including the perspective of all gender groups and age groups in workshops and consultations should be done more systematically to ensure wide representations of all stakeholder groups
• Monitoring and evaluation tools should be embedded and integrated as a part of the governance and management structure of the project from the outset

UK PACT funding has allowed the successful pilot of the CCH concept, enabling the team to access further funding to replicate and scale-up the model not only in Kenya but across other geographies in Africa.