How cooling could redefine Africa’s food, health, economic future

When Rwanda hosts Africa’s first-ever Festival of Cooling, it is not just staging a landmark event—it is signalling a continental shift. Behind the science of cold-chains lies a powerful story about food security, health resilience, job creation, and climate action. ALSO READ: Inaugural cooling festival to spotlight innovation in Kigali At the heart of this transformation is the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain (ACES), based in Kigali, which is fast positioning Rwanda as a continental hub for innovation in sustainable cooling. In this exclusive interview, Toby Peters, Professor of Cold Economy at the University of Birmingham and Founding Director of ACES, explains why cooling is no longer a technical afterthought but a cornerstone of Africa’s social and economic agenda. ALSO READ: New eco-friendly food cooling method unveiled From empowering smallholder farmers in rural Rwanda to shaping new agro-export industries, from safeguarding vaccines to creating jobs for young Africans, Peters argues that cooling is the invisible infrastructure that could unlock Africa’s prosperity and resilience. ALSO READ: Rwanda’s cooling centre mobilises $25m to improve vaccine supply Below are the excerpts: Rwanda is hosting Africa’s first Festival of Cooling. Why is this not just a milestone event, but a signal of a new economic and social transformation for the continent? The Festival of Cooling is more than a gathering. With the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain operational and activities expanding, it is a declaration that Africa is ready to put sustainable cooling, and more specifically cold-chain, at the heart of its social, economic, environmental and One Health agendas. ALSO READ: Proposed ‘green’ cooling centre seeks to cut post-harvest losses Cold-chain is the critical piece that underpins food security and nutrition, improves health outcomes, creates new jobs for youth, especially young women, and builds climate resilience. With the Festival we are taking that message out to the public, including through the schools, farmers and local innovators. If a farmer gets an interest in trying out the cold-chain, a student gets inspired to take on a future career in the cold-chain, a teacher brings knowledge back to their classroom, a start-up that was at the verge of giving up on the cold-chain business path decides to give it another try, the festival would have achieved its aim. Post-harvest losses remain one of Africa’s silent crises. How do you see sustainable cooling reshaping the entire agricultural value chain—from farm to market to export? Today, Sub-Saharan Africa loses more than 37% of food produced between harvest and market, equivalent to 120–170 kilograms per person each year. These losses devastate farmers’ incomes. But how can we create resilient value chains if produce cannot be preserved from the point of harvest? By integrating pre-cooling, cold storage, and refrigerated transport, we can protect the shelf life, connect farmers to markets, and facilitate exports. ALSO READ: Local farmers lose 30% in post-harvest processes It is not just about reducing losses – it is about enabling value addition for smallholder farmer communities through processing, packaging, and branding, turning raw produce into market-ready, nutritious food for more people. In doing so, sustainable cold-chain becomes an engine of investment in rural economies, creating new jobs across farming, logistics, and processing, and builds more resilient livelihoods. What concrete difference can cold-chain infrastructure make to a smallholder farmer in Rwanda today, and how could that scale up nationally? For farmers in Ngoma, Huye, Musanze, Rubavu, Rusizi, or Nyagatare, access to a cold-chain could mean the ability to store produce longer, reduce loss, sell tomatoes or milk at a better price day or even weeks after harvest, and crucially, enabling value addition – not just preservation - that allow communities to capture more of the food system’s value. Community Cooling Hubs (CCH) developed by ACES, enables groups of farmers to aggregate produce and collectively reach local and distant markets as well as even think about become local food producers and creating value addition within the community, driving higher incomes. Scaled nationally, these hubs create food corridors that link rural communities to urban centres and export markets, ensuring inclusive participation in Rwanda’s economic development. Rwanda is moving deliberately into food processing and value addition. In your view, how can cooling be the backbone that turns Rwanda from a consumer market into an agro-export powerhouse? Globally, farmers capture only about 25% of food value chains. In Africa, limited processing means just $40 of value is added per tonne of produce, five times less than in high-income countries. Africa has more than 60% of the world’s arable land. Yet, it imported food worth up to $115 billion in the last year. Cooling changes this. By enabling better post-harvest management to ensure better quality produce and local storage and processing, farmers and cooperatives can create branded products, from juices to dried fruits. Rwanda can shift from being a price-taker to a price-maker, building competitive agro-industries that earn foreign exchange and strengthen resilience. The “cold-chain economy” is an emerging sector globally. Where do you see the biggest job and entrepreneurship opportunities for young Africans, and how is Rwanda positioning itself to seize them? Cold-chain is a job’s agenda. From technicians installing and maintaining refrigeration units to a growth in logistics to entrepreneurs creating new manufacturing for solar-powered cooling in-country to building new food brands, to implementing opportunities or tapping into AI are immense. With over 60% of Africa’s population under 25, this is also a youth agenda. Rwanda is positioning itself through ACES as an education and innovation hub, offering more than 25 programmes from short courses to Master’s degrees, combined with hands-on training at Rubirizi campus. This builds the skilled workforce in country and entrepreneurial pipeline needed to drive Africa’s cold-chain economy. Can you share specific examples of how cooling innovation is unlocking new businesses or start-ups in Rwanda? At ACES, young innovators are developing clean energy cold storage and transport solutions, mobile cooling business including home delivery, apps to create new markets, smart fridges, and milk and fish cold-chain services. Many approach us for training and support to grow these ventures. The Festival of Cooling’s innovation competitions will highlight such start-ups, showing Rwanda is not only adopting global solutions but developing home-grown innovations to export across Africa. Reliable vaccine and medicine storage is a matter of life and death. How has Rwanda’s approach to health cold-chains created a model for resilience that others in Africa can adopt? Rwanda has built robust vaccine supply chains, a strength that became evident during COVID-19. Yet across Africa, 25% of vaccines are wasted due to poor cold-chains. Through ACES, Rwanda is demonstrating new ideas like the use of drones, advancing training for logisticians and engineers, ensuring medicines, blood, and vaccines are preserved effectively. It is also underpinning the “One Health” approach and the role of the cold-chain as the foundation of public health resilience. Rwanda’s model will show how strong systems and local capacity can save lives and build trust. ACES is at the centre of this conversation. What role are you playing in ensuring Rwanda’s leadership translates into continental systems change? ACES was born in Rwanda but built with a Pan-African vision. We demonstrate scalable models and new innovations like the Community Cooling Hub at Rubirizi. We provide training to the highest standards. But also, for example with the first state of the art equipment test centre in sub-Saharan Africa, we can now test appliances in Africa for Africa - and stop being a dumping ground for sub-standard appliances. We convene governments, investors, and innovators to co-design solutions and strengthen regional food and health corridors. In short, ACES and Rwanda provide leadership and the testbed that can serve as a reference for others; the benefits can then be extended across Africa. Hosting this festival positions Rwanda as a continental leader. Do you see this moment as Rwanda’s Kigali Declaration on sustainable cooling—something that sets a precedent for Africa? Absolutely. Just as Kigali is already known globally for the Kigali Amendment on climate, this Festival can establish Rwanda as the centre of a new global movement on sustainable cooling. It can signal Africa’s collective determination to place cooling alongside energy and water as critical infrastructure for the 21st century. This is also a key moment as we look to the tenth anniversary of the Kigali Amendment next year. Innovation competitions are part of the festival. How can Rwanda ensure these winners don’t just get exposure but also secure investment, partnerships, and pathways to scale globally? The festival is designed to catalyse action, connecting innovators with investors, policymakers, and partners. Rwanda can leverage its innovation-friendly policy environment to provide incubation, financing mechanisms, and market access. By aligning winners with regional and international investment pipelines, they can move from prototypes to thriving businesses. Many African countries face financing hurdles for large-scale infrastructure. How do you make cold-chain solutions affordable, scalable, and inclusive, so that rural farmers and clinics benefit, not just big companies? Affordability comes from shared, modular solutions. Community Cooling Hubs aggregate demand from farmers, clinics, and businesses, making systems viable. But we also work with the communities to create financeable business models grounded in sound data are critical to unlock finance. Rwanda can combine concessional climate funds, government incentives, and private capital. Inclusivity requires targeting rural communities first, ensuring women and youth are prioritised. Partnerships are often the real accelerators of change. Which kinds of global or regional partnerships should Rwanda prioritise after this festival? Rwanda should prioritise partnerships that deliver finance, technical and business know-how, and markets. This means collaboration with development banks, universities for R&D, and private-sector players in logistics and retail and of course food processing. Regional cooperation is equally vital to design food and health corridors linking Rwanda with East Africa and beyond. Cold-chain is often seen as technical. How do you make the wider public, farmers, youth, and patients see it as a transformative enabler of daily life and prosperity? The key is storytelling. Farmers must see it as higher incomes; patients as safe vaccines; youth as new jobs; consumers as access to safe, nutritious food. By framing cold-chain as a human enabler of livelihoods. equity and resilience, we shift it from the technical to the transformative. That is what this festival seeks to do: make the invisible visible. Looking 10 years ahead, what does success look like? Paint us a picture of Rwanda in 2035 if the sustainable cold-chain agenda is fully realised. We are driven by Rwanda’s national agenda and the Rwanda 20250 Vision. In 2035, success would be Rwanda’s farmers export premium produce regionally and globally enabled by robust cold-chains. Food loss has been cut dramatically, farmer incomes have doubled, and rural communities host thriving micro-enterprises in processing and logistics while Rwanda as a whole has access to nutritional food. Vaccines and medicines reach every clinic safely, reducing preventable deaths. And all underpinned, delivered and maintained by a new workforce of trained and skilled Rwandans. Rwanda stands as Africa’s centre of excellence and centre of reference for clean cooling and cold-chain, with resilient low-carbon and climate-friendly value chains linking the region. Finally, if you had to distil the Festival of Cooling into one powerful message for the world, what would Rwanda’s story say? “Born in Rwanda, Pan-African in vision.” Rwanda is showing the world that sustainable cooling and cold-chain is not just about technology or equipment, it is about opportunity people, prosperity, and resilience. But also The Festival of Cooling is about recognising cold-chain as critical infrastructure, building equitable, inclusive systems that protect both people and planet.

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How cooling could redefine Africa’s food, health, economic future