Solar Sister and Koolboks have formalized a partnership that commits to equipping one thousand women entrepreneurs across Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania with solar-powered productive use of energy technologies by 2028. The initiative, branded as “Powered By”, pairs Solar Sister’s last-mile, women-led distribution network with Koolboks’ off-grid refrigeration and pay-as-you-go models. The stated aim is to convert access to electricity into immediate, income-generating services, cold storage for market vendors, vaccine-grade cold chains for clinics, and refrigerated processing for small food businesses, so that electrification yields livelihoods as quickly as light.
The challenge the partnership addresses is large and measurable. About six hundred million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack reliable electricity, and roughly one billion people on the continent lack access to clean cooking solutions; those deficits make refrigeration unaffordable or impossible for many value-chain actors. International assessments place post-harvest losses for many staples in the high tens of percent, often above 30 percent in vulnerable supply chains, meaning that missing cold storage is not only a technical problem but a steady, quantifiable drain on food availability and incomes.
Solar Sister brings distribution scale rather than testing a new business model from scratch. The organization reports more than 12,100 women entrepreneurs and says it has reached over 5.5 million people with solar lighting and clean cookstoves; that density implies an average of roughly 455 customers served per entrepreneur. That arithmetic, a practical benchmark derived from Solar Sister’s published reach, is what the program aims to convert into refrigeration and other productive-use services: trusted local sellers offering a technical product plus a service relationship, not only a one-off sale.
Koolboks supplies the refrigeration technology and recently secured financing to scale it. The company reports thousands of solar freezer deployments across roughly 25 countries and closed an approximately $11 million Series A to expand local assembly and distribution. Koolboks’ units combine solar resilience, IoT monitoring and flexible payment options, a package designed to lower the operational risk of running cold chains where grid voltage and cash inflows are intermittent. Those technical and commercial choices make a targeted roll-out to 1,000 entrepreneurs operationally credible if logistics and finance are aligned.
Country realities will determine the cadence of impact. Nigeria’s national access to electricity is around 61 percent, and recurrent grid collapses have driven businesses toward diesel generators that raise costs and compress margins. Kenya has higher national access rates but still significant rural shortfalls that solar PUE can address quickly, while Tanzania has recorded rapid rural electrification gains yet retains substantial off-grid communities where localized cold chains would immediately unlock market value. These national differences shape equipment choices, payment models and after-sales strategies in each market.
The program’s benefits are practical and measurable. Koolboks’ reporting and partner materials point to tens of thousands of tones of food preserved through its deployed units, and FAO-linked analyses show that reducing post-harvest spoilage even modestly yields direct income gains for traders and producers. Replacing diesel cooling with solar refrigeration also cuts fuel costs and local emissions and enables new revenue streams, for example, a vendor moving from day-only sales to refrigerated overnight stock and higher-value products. If Solar Sister’s average penetration is reproduced for refrigeration, a thousand trained entrepreneurs could stabilize supply for hundreds of thousands of customers over time.
That potential is not guaranteed. Durable impact requires spare-parts logistics, a trained technician base, accessible consumer finance, and reliable after-sales service, gaps Solar Sister and Koolboks explicitly highlight in their CGI materials and say they will address through training, gender-disaggregated monitoring and scalable service models. Projects that ignore those operational realities too often deliver a short-term headline and little sustained community value; the true test will be whether the initial cohorts remain profitable and operational three years after deployment rather than reverting to informal, diesel-based arrangements.
This partnership is a pragmatic test of how to link electrification to livelihoods. Aligning PUE investments with continental initiatives such as Mission 300 and recent multilateral pledges can mobilize blended finance that couples product subsidies with local assembly and business training, lowering unit costs and building domestic capacity. If Solar Sister and Koolboks can convert one thousand targeted deployments into durable, women-led enterprises that preserve food, cut emissions and raise incomes, the model will be a replicable pathway for how clean energy moves beyond lighting to become an engine of equitable, climate-resilient growth across Africa.
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