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By Brown Chimezie
In a bid to save small businesses and homes from loss associated with poor electricity resulting in perishable items in freezer going bad, Koolboks, a French tech startup with a focus on serving a Nigerian market and making cooling affordable and accessible to all, has come to their rescue with geospatial technology and solar power to provide sustainable refrigeration in not only Nigeria but Africa.
According to Mr. Dominic Ayoola, the co-founder of this innovation,
Koolboks is a French startup that intends to democratise the way the world experiences cooling. “Our mission is to make cooling affordable and accessible to everyone that needs it. So today, in Africa, we have three significant challenges.
“One; 40 per cent of food is wasted in emerging markets; also, we have about five out of every 10 patients that get to die due to vaccine spoilage. Two; we know that affording a refrigerator is usually expensive and when you have it, there is no electricity.
“Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa today lack access to electricity and therefore lack access to refrigeration. And when they even have refrigeration, the cost of owning one is usually an uneasy task. Because after getting a refrigerator, they typically have to get a generating set and then you start buying fuel to be able to run your refrigerator.
“Thirdly, most of the refrigerants that are being used are dangerous refrigerants. They have been banned in the West and these are 80,000 times more dangerous than carbon, but that is what still exists in African countries,” he said.
As an innovation out to recreate cooling system and offer a variety of other advantages, Koolboks creates an affordable off-grid solution that is able to generate continuous refrigeration for up to four days, even in the absence of power and limited sunlight.
“And this what we did by storing energy in the form of ice, rather than in just batteries.
“The unit can function as a refrigerator or as a freezer. It can also function as a source of lighting for households and shops.
“It is meant specifically for off-grid areas and comes with 2 LED lighting bulbs and USB ports for charging mobile phones,” Ayoola continued.
As part of the huge advantage of using Koolboks refrigerator, the product, according to the company, has been fashioned to make sure it gets to every home with easy-to-pay delivery method.
“No one should be deprived of refrigeration because of cost. Koolboks with its innovative embedded paygo technology is able to offer distributors the opportunity to be able to offer the Koolhome freezers on a lease to own to their customers,” said Deborah Gael, one of the founders of the innovation.”
