Efficiency for Access R&D Fund: Solar Cooling Key Components for a better Access to Refrigeration in the Agri-Food Sector Smallholder farms constitute approximately 80% of all farms in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region in which over two-thirds of the overall population —620 million people— lack access to electrification and related services, such as cooling. 
Without cooling, smallholder male and female farmers face several challenges such as post-harvest losses and less access to markets limiting their profits from business opportunities. Furthermore, commercially available cooling systems are usually imported without consideration of the local context. Specifically, i) shipment duties and taxes increase the final costs of imported cooling systems, and; ii) available cooling systems are not tailored to individual needs of farmers but instead designed to serve a mass market and to be produced in high quantities.
The proposed project seeks to address these challenges by promoting small-scale solar cooling solutions that are assembled locally, building on our previous work to promote solar cooling units instead of completed systems. We recognise that farmers and value chain actors are diverse and characterised by various socio-economic attributes. Therefore, in order to design systems that are compatible with the sector’s needs, agricultural value chains need to be understood with specific attention to the dynamics affecting farmers’ access to and use of cooling. Therefore, the main goal of the project is to further develop and commercialize affordable key cooling components tailored to the diverse needs of value chain actors as well as to enable employment opportunities through building local capacity. Our objectives are highly inspired by the challenges we have faced in the past by piloting cooling systems in the field. Our main priorities are in alignment with the EforA scope by following points:
• Modular cooling designs, sub-systems and components for local assembly.
• Flexible and modular designs, e.g. availability to modify set-point temperatures, easily increase capacity of the system and use the same cooling  units & components for a wide range of applications.
• System controls including energy management, energy storage, PAYG compatibility and remote monitoring.
• Innovative designs around cooling products.
• Systems thinking on cooling. The solar cooling team of Solar Cooling Engineering UG and the University of Hohenheim has developed an approach that integrates agricultural value chains, final users and technology suppliers. Recent research in the field has shown that farmers face several challenges to profit from business opportunities related to the access to cooling systems. These challenges are on the one hand, related to how available cooling systems adapt to the reality of the given food value chain. On the other hand, the technology suppliers of cooling systems face the multiple challenges of expensive transport/import, distribution and marketing costs especially regarding product distribution in isolated rural areas. Therefore, the promotion of solar cooling systems needs to consider the fact that, technical solutions can only become economically sustainable if designed, produced, installed and maintained by local skilled staff in close collaboration with final users, e.g. farmers.
Therefore, the main beneficiaries from the suggested project are on one side the local skilled staff able to commercialize their own products, and on the other hand final customers (e.g. male and female farmers across different income levels in rural areas) who will have access to solutions, which are adapted to their needs and locally maintained. These solutions will eventually increase the income of the final users by enhancing access to markets and by reducing post-harvest losses.