SokoFresh

The challenge

Africa’s smallholder farmers lose millions of kilograms worth of produce to post-harvest losses every year. This creates an urgency to sell the food quickly once matured, which exposes farmers to exploitation from brokers. About 30%-40% of horticulture produce in sub-Saharan Africa does not make it to market, hindered by informal and unreliable supply chains. Without a place to store it, produce will rot, leaving farmers with less quality produce to sell and resulting in vast quantities of food going to waste.

The innovation

SokoFresh provides reliable and efficient solar-powered cold-storage solutions to support the East Africa horticulture sector, disrupting the value chain by structuring produce aggregation, upgrading the logistics process, and decentralizing cold-chain access. By finding buyers—both domestic and export-processing—through its market linkage platform, SokoFresh eliminates numerous middlemen and increases farmer income.

SokoFresh’s promise of better prices and consistent demand remains a winning formula for securing and retaining new farmers. Buyers are willing to procure more volume and pay a premium for top-quality supplies, reliability, and fair and transparent pricing as they save costs on aggregation and logistics.