What if we could save up to 40% of Africa’s food without growing a single extra crop?
That’s the provocative question at the heart of the latest Devex Dish, which takes a deep dive into one of the most overlooked drivers of food insecurity: the lack of reliable cold-chain infrastructure. In sub-Saharan Africa, massive volumes of food spoil between farm and market, undermining farmer incomes, worsening malnutrition, and accelerating climate damage.
The article explores how sustainable, climate-friendly cold chains can be a game-changer for food security in a warming world. Cold chains, networks of refrigerated storage and transport, can dramatically cut food loss, reduce emissions, and stabilize farmer livelihoods. But scaling them in smallholder-dominated markets is hard. Conventional refrigeration is expensive, energy-intensive, and often inaccessible in rural or off-grid areas. That’s where new models matter.
Devex highlights SokoFresh, an Enviu venture, as an example of how innovation and inclusive business design can unlock access to cooling where it’s needed most. SokoFresh provides solar-powered walk-in cold rooms and operates on a pay-as-you-store model, allowing smallholder farmers to access cold storage without upfront capital or reliable grid electricity. Today, SokoFresh serves more than 5,000 farmers annually across Kenya, reducing post-harvest losses and increasing farmers’ ability to sell when prices are right, not when produce is about to spoil.
Beyond individual ventures, the Devex piece zooms out to the bigger system: the role of blended finance, public-sector leadership, and emerging technologies in scaling sustainable cooling across Africa. With demand for sustainable cooling in developing economies projected to reach $600 billion annually by 2050, the opportunity is significant, but so are the risks if investment and policy continue to lag.
The takeaway is clear. The tools to strengthen food systems already exist. The challenge now is to move proven solutions from pilot to scale and ensure farmers aren’t left to bear the cost of adaptation alone.
