Challenge
30% of Kenyans are food insecure and the majority of the 15 million people are dependent on smallholder farming for their income and live below the poverty line, while over 90% of national food supply depends on them. 40-50% of horticulture produce in Kenya goes to waste because of poor post-harvest handling and supply chain inefficiencies, such as farmers isolated from markets, too many middlemen moving produce from farm to market, lack of efficient transport and lack of cold supply chains accessibility by farmers, who are currently exploited by middlemen, to find better markets and earn better incomes.
Solution
SokoFresh’s key objective is to develop a scalable and replicable approach towards eliminating post-harvest food loss in smallholder farmer value chains, as well as improving the resilience and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The innovator integrates large-scale cold storage and processing services for smallholder farmers, making it affordable, and accessible. Their holistic approach is to combine professional aggregation practices, reliable off-grid cold storage capacity at farm level, value-add processing at the aggregation point and market linkage. Its digital market platform helps to create access to markets, further incentivising farmers to adopt their cold storage solutions.
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