Glasgow, November 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)-Dysmus Kisilu grew up under the care of his grandmother in rural eastern Kenya and witnessed the hardships of farmers' work-and they usually earn very little.

He said that even today, when the potato harvest season arrives each year, due to the surge in supply, a 90-kilogram bag of sacks sells for only 2,000 Kenyan shillings (18 U.S. dollars) in the local market.

Four months later, the value of the same sacks has tripled - but small farmers have sold their crops, fearing that they will rot if they try to catch them.

"Farmers have never been able to negotiate," Kisloo said. "The buyer said the price was $2,000, and they had to agree, otherwise the product would be wasted."

But the 29-year-old young man won a scholarship to study renewable energy at the University of California, Davis, and he found a promising solution: cold storage for off-grid rural areas, running on solar energy.

His Solar Freeze technology allows farmers to pay a small daily fee to put their crops in cold storage until the price rises, thereby increasing their income and reducing food waste, which is an important factor in global warming.

Kisilu's climate-smart cooling technology has also been quickly used to solve a new problem: refrigerating COVID-19 vaccines and other medicines in remote areas outside the power grid.

In an interview on the sidelines of the COP26 UN climate negotiations in Glasgow, he said: "It is great to see how quickly the local people are willing to accept this technology after trying it."

The young Kenyan is one of the winners of this year's Ashden Awards, which aims to promote low-carbon innovation in sustainable energy and development.

John Njogu of the Dutch development organization SNV says his technology enables small businesses in remote areas to access affordable electricity, and the organization uses Kisilu's technology in Kakuma, Kenya's oldest refugee camp.

Kisilu's innovation began when he studied renewable energy technology during his university years.

"I'm very fascinated," he said. "I think these things are very practical at home-but there is no connection between research and what is happening on the ground."

Therefore, with the participation of his classmates in 2019 and the support of some initial funding from the university and the US Agency for International Development, he came up with a container-sized solar cooler with spare batteries to store perishable agricultural products.

Subsequently, he cooperated with Kenyan agricultural officials to set up experimental coolers in Kenya’s market and agricultural product collection centers. Each cooler can hold up to 400 boxes of vegetables, and the daily charge starts from 20 Kenyan shillings (2 cents) per box. .

The initial response was unremarkable.

"The average age of farmers is 65-they are a little skeptical," Kisilu pointed out. "Most farmers are not exposed to technologies such as cooling and irrigation. This is all new to them, and they think it is too expensive."

The young businessman’s father suspected that his well-educated son would become a struggling entrepreneur, rather than finding a stable job in a multinational company, so he handed him the job advertisement in the newspaper.

"Sometimes I even watch it," Kislu recalled.

However, he also developed a second solar cooler the size of a reefer — for sale instead of providing a chargeable cooling service — and quickly started to take off, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.

A woman at a health clinic in Kenya ordered one of the US$400 to pay in installments using the country's mobile phone-based M-Pesa payment system, and then introduced Kisilu to five other buyers.

Now he has sold 120 coolers, these coolers also have USB ports for charging mobile phones and a set of rechargeable solar lights.

Kisilu said that cooling devices are increasingly being used for purposes he never imagined, including storing breast milk for nursing mothers in Kakuma camp in northern Kenya so that they can work during the day while others look after their babies.

He has also received inquiries from coastal fishing communities as far away as Somalia, hoping that their fish will remain fresh, as well as agricultural exporters from Nigeria.

When installing solar coolers, Kisilu noticed young people crowding together to watch-and began to think about how young people and skilled workers are in short supply for expanding solar energy in Africa.

This prompted him to launch "Each One Teach One", a peer-to-peer learning program designed to expand the solar skills of young people, especially women, who currently account for 60% of the trainees.

"Climbing on the roof (installing solar panels) is considered a man's job. Women have not really accepted this kind of work," he said. "But renewable energy is coming very fast, and we really need more people to participate in it."

So far, about 100 young people including Kakuma refugee camp have accepted the four-month solar energy skills training program jointly established by Kisilu and Kenya Technical University, and have learned to install and maintain solar energy equipment.

"The idea is that everyone you train can be an evangelist," he said. "When a young person finds a job in a new field, others tend to become more attractive."

Slowly, Kisilu's farmer cold storage business—his original idea—is also increasing.

He said that with the help of his grandmother, he introduced the Women's Farm Cooperative, and now about 3,000 farmers use the service regularly, and Kisilu's company has finally balanced its balance and even achieved "a little profit".

He hopes to obtain franchise rights for coolers, and is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions to make changes — such as greater use of evaporative cooling — which will reduce the price of solar coolers.

"The years were really frustrating, and I was really skeptical at some point," he said. But "now there is light at the end of the tunnel".

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