Earthshot winner Keep IT Cool solves food loss for fisherfolk and smallholder poultry farmers in East Africa
Summary
The company is one of five winners of the prestigious 2024 Earthshot Prize.Our collaboration with Acumen centers on our mutual commitment to uplifting underserved African communities, says Francis Nderitu, Keep IT Cools co-founder and managing director. We strive to empower these communities by boosting their productivity, improving market access, and minimizing waste, ultimately helping to increase their incomes.When Francis and his co-founder, Abigail Gachigi, first approached the fisherfolk who work on Lake Victoria, they expected them to have a preservation problem. It provides solar-powered cold storage units to retailers as well.Keep IT Cool has increased the incomes of 3,600 fisherfolk by more than 15% and has virtually eliminated post-harvest loss within its network.Like many of the entrepreneurs that Acumen invests in, Francis grew up surrounded by the problem that he would one day address. Living on a farm in Kenya, he saw first-hand how his family struggled to get fair prices for their produce.As a young man, he purchased his first laptop with his own money, and it was with that laptop that he would go on to excel in computer technology, receive a masters in social entrepreneurship, and eventually launch Keep IT Cool in 2021 with Abigail as a small, self-funded startup with an outsized ambition: to end food waste for smallholder farmers in East Africa.Three years later, Keep IT Cool has built a network that comprises 40 supermarkets and more than 2,000 small businesses. This alignment with our goal to build long-term resilience in local markets made this an easy choice for us.Abigail echoes this sentiment: I am excited about this partnership because it aligns with our mission, giving us an opportunity to scale our initiatives centered around capacitating smallholder fish and poultry farmers to make sustainable income and create more opportunities for them to build climate-resilient communities.This is one of Acumens investments under its Forcibly Displaced People (FDP) Lens Investing program in East Africa.