Youth-led solutions for vaccine and agricultural cold chain challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa
Across human comfort and safety and medical and agricultural cold chains, small- to mid-size cooling businesses are working to generate technological solutions and take advantage of new business models. This story about sustainable cooling solutions in action was originally published in Chilling Prospects 2021.
Triomphant Tchulang grew up between Bafoussam (West Cameroon) and Yaoundé (Central Cameroon), an area with a cold and mild climate. He later moved to Maroua (Northern Cameroon) for his schooling, where high temperatures and heatwaves threatened the health and safety of the community and created challenges in storing agricultural produce. Following the development of the renewable energy sector in recent years, Triomphant worked to address the challenges caused by excessive heat with the use of solar energy, building a prototype for an absorption solar refrigerator. There were a number of challenges at the outset, notably that the prototype only produced energy for portions of the day, the useful part of the refrigerator was very small compared to its overall size, and it could not reach freezing temperatures. After working to address these over a two-year period, the Bi-Solar Tech Fridge was created.
