Small-scale fishermen in Kenya often work under difficult conditions, and when they bring in their catch, most have nowhere to store it, since power supply is either absent or unreliable.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, there are over 12.3 million small-scale fishers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately 45 percent of their fish harvest goes to waste daily due to lack of access to affordable and reliable cold-storage services.
Most of them depend on ice to preserve their catch, but this is not accessible to majority of them. Some sundry the fish, but dried fish fetches much less than fresh fish. As it is, refrigeration can double fishing revenues by extending the shelf life of their catch.
With this knowledge in mind, in July 2021, Dennis Onkangi, 29, and Purity Gakuo, 25, founded Kuza Freezer, a youth-led AgriTech start-up based in Mombasa. The aim was to empower rural communities in the fish value chain through offering them affordable refrigeration. Kuza is a Swahili word that means to “grow”.
“To bridge this cold-chain gap, our company manufactures low-cost, pay-as-you-go solar-powered freezers that improve livelihoods of the rural fishermen and women fish farmers by reducing post-harvest losses and enabling them to achieve economic resilience,” says Dennis, pointing out that the solar freezers save tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
With a starting capital of Sh250, 000 that was raised through crowdfunding and bootstrapping, in 2020, the duo went about building their pilot phase. It was successful.
Dennis shows some of the portable freezers they manufacture at their yard in Bamburi Mtambo, in Mombasa County.
Dennis is an impact innovator and a techpreneur, a graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rongo University and a self-taught refrigeration expert with over four years working experience, while Purity’s background is in business management. She has had a long experience interacting with rural women in the fish value chain, especially in the fish farming business.
“I met my co-founder in an Agricultural Society of Kenya exhibition event. It happened that she had the idea but was looking for a co-founder with technical expertise to help bring her idea to fruition. This is what created the basis of our research that gave birth to the Kuza Freezer,” explains Dennis.
Having interacted with small-scale fishers for over five years, the duo were able to understand that post-harvest losses due to lack of affordable cold-storage services remains their greatest challenge.
“We felt a sense of responsibility to bridge the cold-chain gap and improve the livelihoods of these fishers. We launched our first pilot products in the year 2020, with over 50 test fishermen,” says Dennis, adding that the pilot phase enabled them to iterate more and improve on their product, making it a market fit.
“We manufacture our own freezers using at least 80 percent locally sourced materials, which makes our product cost competitive. Our product is unique in that it comes with features such as a digital display and environmentally compliant refrigerant.”
The refrigerator is powered by direct current (DC) 12V solar and has a temperature range of 10-20 degrees Celsius.
“Our product functions as a refrigerator or freezer and can also function as a source of lighting. We are also offering our products on a pay-as-you-go payment model which makes it affordable to the low income small-sale fishers.’’
Leveraging solar energy has made the freezers suitable for off-grid usage. They come with a free clean lighting package enabled by three bulbs. The company only imports 20 percent of the production materials it uses, a factor that has lowered their cost of production.
“Our solution is to generate continuous refrigeration for up to four days, even in the absence of power and limited sunlight, by storing energy in the form of ice, rather than just in batteries,” offers Dennis.
Kuza Freezer co-founder Dennis Onkangi shows some of the freezers at their yard in Bamburi Mtambo in Mombasa County.
The Kuza Freezer has been incubated and accelerated by accelerators such as Somo Africa and Kenya Climate and Innovation center, who have supported the business through entrepreneurship and business coaching.
With a diverse team of 11 drawn from ICT and engineering, Kuza Freezer products are monitored remotely, a factor that has improved the quality of their service. The freezers can also be fitted on motorbikes and trikes that distribute fresh fish.
“The urge to create a positive impact in our communities through climate focused and socially responsible cold storage solutions is what motivated us to come up with Kuza Freezer,” says Dennis, of his company’s vision.
The solar freezer also allows aggregation, traceability, and quality control to prevent spoilage, in turn maximising profits for small-scale fishers.
“We are targeting small-scale fishers and women fish farmers from low-income fishing communities especially those in off-grid settlements. We also target the fish mongers who buy from catchers daily and keep their fish on ice slabs in their homes or shops and sell it on the same day.”
The solar-powered cooling unit consists of a patented cold storage technology made up of a high power compressor unit and a body mounted condensing unit that efficiently runs on 300W solar cells which are either installed on the rooftop of shops or on top of the sun shade for motor tricycles.
On board IoT sensors ensure that the system is functional when required without necessarily involving the rider’s intervention. They also constantly track the location, temperature and power status from their user friendly app – Kuza Mobile App.
Dennis explains that the freezers are light weight devices, a factor made possible through the use of lightweight materials that are structurally strong and durable. They use powerful 200A Gel batteries to ensure that enough power is stored for night transits or when solar intensity is low.
The portable freezers come in various sizes, with some coming in an average capacity of 100 liters.
“The power storage efficiency of our products during rainy seasons is under control since we use powerful batteries that can sustain the products for at least 24 hours when fully charged,” says Dennis.
Chilled storage
“Although our freezers can attain a temperature of 20 degrees Celcius by default, the temperature has been set at 0 to 5 degrees Celsius using a thermostat. This condition is similar to that of fish stored in ice, a preferred storage method for retail sale.
“This temperature range reduces the power requirement of the freezer and helps to prolong the cooling and storage time. A small quantity of ice can also be used to keep fish, and the cooler temperature of 0 to 5 degrees Celsius will retard melting of ice and prolong the chilled storage in the event of less battery power on days of shorter day light.”
Although their major challenge is raising capital to scale their manufacturing processes since most of their production processes are manual, making it hard for them to meet the rising demands from customers, to date, the business has distributed over 150 freezers to small-scale fishers in Kenya, in the past 12 months.
“The demand is higher than our supply, and as we scale our manufacturing processes, we project to reach at least 3,500 fishers in the next five years,” he explains.
Fishers are required to pay a deposit of as low as Sh15,000 followed by a daily installment of Sh250 for 15 months, after which they fully own the freezer. Sensors monitor the freezer temperature, solar and battery charging status.
“We have reached over 250 rural fishers with our solar freezers, with about 60 percent being women fish farmers and through post-harvest losses reduction, their income has improved.”
This is not all, the business, which offers free training on proper fishing techniques and fish handling skills, has created more than 260 direct and indirect jobs in manufacturing, distribution, aquaculture and community development. Some of its CSR activities include beach clean-ups.
Leveraging solar energy
The team joins the community, and together, they clean the beaches.
“We contribute to the reduction of carbon footprint by leveraging solar energy.
Their unique product has not gone unnoticed, with Kuza Freezer having won awards in the African Continental Free Trade Area Caravan Prize in 2021, Best solar power solution in the BlueInvest event held in Seychelles and Best food security solution in the Connected Summit 2022.
Their focus is on structuring the business, to expand the product range and increase their market share by ensuring continuity to remain relevant in the evolving market and appealing to their customers and society at large. This, Dennis points out, will be key to the company’s expansion.
“Kuza Freezer has the potential to scale and improve the livelihoods of millions of small-scale fishers and fish producers in Kenya and Africa at large. Our future plan is to set up a proper manufacturing plant in Kenya that will enable us to accelerate our production and scale faster. Through cross border trade we also plan to extend our services to neighbouring countries,” concludes Dennis. BY DAILY NATION