KIGALI, October 2 (IPS) – Publish-harvest losses, notably in rural areas, threaten the beneficial properties Africa is making in agricultural manufacturing and export capability.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, as much as 40% of farm produce is misplaced due to a scarcity of chilly storage, in keeping with trade gamers.
Extremely perishable farm produce, like fruit and veggies, can go as excessive as 70%.
With agriculture accounting for one-third of the Gross Home Product and using over 60%, such a loss threatens jobs and the livelihoods of thousands and thousands of individuals.
Farmers in Africa grapple with a scarcity of dependable refrigeration, an underdeveloped chilly chain and unreliable energy storage, leaving harvests to warmth and spoilage.
Poor street networks and restricted refrigerated transport choices additionally worsen the scenario. Farmers transport fruits lengthy distances to processing centres underneath non-ideal circumstances, leading to losses.
Renewable Power Provides an Alternative
On the Africa Meals Programs Discussion board in Kigali, Rwanda, consultants are exploring how renewable vitality can ease the burden on farmers who typically flip to diesel mills to chill their farms’ recent produce.
Olamide Niyi-Afuye, Chief Govt Officer at Africa Minigrid Builders Affiliation (AMDA), an trade affiliation working to enhance the working setting for mini-grids, stated the most important hole shouldn’t be consciousness however aggregation and intentional market design.
“We already see particular person examples of mini-grids powering agro-processing, chilly storage and different productive actions,” he stated.
“The problem is that these are nonetheless too typically handled as particular person initiatives relatively than a part of a scalable industrial mannequin.”
Mugwe Manga, a Local weather Finance Lead at Monetary Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya), an impartial belief supporting micro and small enterprises, stated vitality presents an incredible alternative for smallholder farmers to seize extra worth from what they produce.
“Photo voltaic, more and more mixed with battery vitality storage, is especially essential as a result of it’s modular, more and more reasonably priced and might be deployed comparatively shortly in rural areas,” he stated.
“Photo voltaic-powered irrigation, chilly storage, drying, milling, cooling and agro-processing can cut back post-harvest losses, improve productiveness, enhance product high quality and permit farmers to promote into higher-value markets.”
Manga stated vitality can change into an essential enabler of each local weather resilience and better farmer incomes.
“The productive use of vitality for chilly storage, solar-pumped irrigation, and agro-processing is vital to worth seize, local weather resilience, and adaptation that can strengthen smallholder farmers,” he stated.
Nigeria, one among Africa’s largest economies, misplaced between $2.3bn and $3.3bn to post-harvest inefficiencies in 2025, in keeping with trade gamers.
The meals wasted as a result of poor storage and transport networks amounted to as much as 40 million metric tonnes.
South Africa loses an estimated 10.3 million tonnes of meals yearly, about 19% of its recent produce, in keeping with a 2021 report titled Waste Analysis Growth and Innovation Roadmap Analysis.
Funding Cooperatives Is a Higher Funding Mannequin
Renewable vitality presents dependable and accessible options to chilly storage and processing issues in Africa, however funding stays a serious problem.
Although costs of photo voltaic panels and batteries shipped from China have been declining in recent times, present costs stay excessive for a lot of farmers, notably smallholders in rural areas.
With low capital amid restricted entry to grants and loans, many can’t afford solar-powered agro-processing and chilly storage services.
Specialists stated that clear vitality is the most cost effective know-how to deploy when farmers work collectively.
“Because of the capital expenditure of a few of these, it’s important for farmers to organise themselves and are available collectively as a collective as a way to reap the benefits of economies of scale and the facility of aggregation that may use vitality for all, versus rolling out these options to particular person smallholders that might not be cost-effective,” stated Manga.
Niyi-Afuye stated there’s a have to carry vitality builders and agribusinesses collectively a lot earlier, combination demand throughout agricultural worth chains, and construction initiatives round credible productive hundreds from the outset.
“The chance is to cease treating vitality and meals techniques as two separate funding circumstances and begin constructing bankable alternatives on the intersection of each,” he stated.
Manga stated one of many key classes from distributed vitality is that the economics are sometimes stronger when gamers transfer away from financing particular person belongings for particular person farmers and as an alternative combination demand.
“Farmers can organise by means of cooperatives, producer organisations, aggregators or rural enterprises and put money into shared infrastructure that serves many producers,” he stated.
“This creates economies of scale, improves asset utilisation and creates a stronger and extra predictable income base.”
Manga stated aggregation additionally makes these initiatives extra enticing to financiers by decreasing transaction prices and perceived danger.
“Moderately than lending in opposition to a whole lot of particular person smallholders, buyers can finance a productive asset with an identifiable operator, clear money flows and an aggregated buyer base,” he stated.
Niyi-Afuye stated the higher mannequin is to combination initiatives into investable portfolios, mix industrial capital with acceptable credit score enhancement and risk-sharing mechanisms, and improve entry to affected person, local-currency financing.
“Financing infrastructure in {dollars} whereas the underlying prospects earn in Nigerian Naira or Kenyan shillings creates a structural mismatch,” he stated.
Pratik Patel, Bureau Chief for East and Southern Africa at AfriCatalyist, a world improvement advisory agency headquartered in Senegal, stated a public-private-producer partnership is the mannequin that may make renewables reasonably priced.
“As a substitute of a chilly storage facility or chilly chain operator making an attempt to face alone as a single industrial enterprise, it’s embedded in a collective plan that covers the total journey from farm to desk, manufacturing, aggregation by means of farmer cooperatives, storage, processing, and market entry, with clear roles and coordination at every stage,” he stated.
He stated the method issues for financing as a result of it offers buyers what a standalone facility can’t, similar to an outlined use case, recognized long-term purchasers, and a reputable path to market.
“When accountability for every hyperlink within the chain is assigned to the actor greatest suited to handle it, the plan turns into legible and de-risked, which is what in the end builds investor confidence,” he stated.
IPS UN Bureau Report
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