SYSTEM THINKING IS KEY TO SOLVING THE "WICKED PROBLEM" IN OUR FOOD SYSTEM - THIS IS THE VISION OF ACES

At the UN Food Systems Summit ( 23 Sept), we must recognise that"food saved is as important as food produced". Lack of effective food refrigeration and cold-chain today is estimated to directly result in the loss of 475 million tonnes or 13% of total food production; enough to feed approximately 950 million people.

But as important is how do we achieve this sustainably within the limits of our planet? Conventional cold-chains are typically energy intensive and polluting due to the emissions from energy use (indirect emissions), normally generated from carbon intensive sources, and from ozone depleting and climate-warming?refrigerants leakages during use and servicing as well as when the equipment is discarded at the end of life (direct emissions).

Current cold-chain interventions often focus on low-risk, siloed approaches aiming to solve issues in isolation. However the food cold-chain is a complex system with many static and moving elements from farm, postharvest management and packaging, sorting and grading to point of sale and indeed consumption. As such establishing a robust and sustainable cold-chain requires the continuing integrated and seamless management of those elements, protecting against negative environmental or social impact or unintended consequences . It requires accountability from multiple levels, including farmers, processors, manufacturers, aggregators, distributors, retailers and consumers. ?In short, developing a sustainable food cold-chain presents a wicked problem with diverse partners, drivers and barriers, all interconnected, varying across countries, depending on the local economic, environmental, social, cultural and political circumstances. It is much more than installing solar cold rooms at farm gate or chiller cabinets with lower GWP refrigerants in supermarket.

The way to support a sustainable cold-chain is through co-ordination. As donors, tackle smaller or siloed issues yes; but within the system and through collaborative efforts with others to ensure each element of the farm to fork chain is addressed.

Equally to deliver sustainable solutions we need to help developing countries build the skills and capacity required to ensure proper installation and servicing of next generation, more technically complex, data- and system-connected equipment with lower or negligible GWP refrigerants while delivering short-term interventions to reduce cooling loads, energy requirements of equipment and GWP of refrigerants in their markets

The Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) was established in 2020 to simultaneously address these two urgent and interconnected global development challenges, namely food loss and access to sustainable cold-chain and cooling.

A key goal is to deliver the right environment, sales channels, customer financing models and support for the development, demonstration and marketing, and installation and maintenance of new technologies.?Alongside demonstrating and proving refrigeration and cold-chain technology in-market, ACES will help build in-country after-sales capability, develop the techno-economic business models and financing mechanisms, help shape policy and develop capacity through research, teaching and training programmes. The centre will serve as the hub for a network of Living Labs across Africa that demonstrate and implement solutions; the first of these is in development in Kenya.

In so doing ACES can help develop and accelerate the uptake of sustainable cold-chain solutions to economically empower farmers, increase export revenues, enhance job creation in rural areas, reduce climate and environment impacts and foster low-carbon development.