In Kenya’s Kinale region, farmers from the Lari Horticultural Cooperative Society are seeing remarkable benefits from new cold storage facilities and refrigerated vans. Before the project, farmers routinely lost up to 40% of their harvests on the way to market. Now, losses have dropped to just a few per cent, and incomes have increased by around 50%.

This success story is part of the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chains (ACES), a collaborative initiative led by UNEP’s United for Efficiency (U4E) in partnership with the University of Birmingham, the Government of Rwanda, and Rwandan academic partners, and supported by the UK Government. ACES helps farmers access sustainable cold-chain technologies, along with training on logistics, pricing strategies, and post-harvest management. More than 300 Kenyan farmers have already been trained.

The project not only reduces food loss but also creates jobs, boosts farmer resilience, and lowers greenhouse gas emissions. With expansion planned beyond Kenya and Rwanda, ACES has the potential to help thousands of smallholder farmers across Africa preserve crops, strengthen livelihoods, and protect the planet.

This story was published to mark the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (29 September 2025), jointly observed by UNEP and FAO to highlight the urgent need to scale up action on reducing food loss and waste as a key step toward more sustainable food systems.

 Read the full story on UNEP’s website.