The $4 Billion Trash Can

Hey, Sheriff here 👋

Picture this: a farmer in Nigeria spends months growing tomatoes.

The rains come on time. The soil is rich. The harvest is glorious.

But by the time those tomatoes hit the market in Lagos? Half of them are mush. 

And the rest are sold at a price most people can’t afford.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s a common story in Africa.

Across Africa, up to 50% of fruits and vegetables rot before they’re eaten.

That’s not just dinner gone bad; it’s $4 billion worth of food lost every year. 

Enough to feed 300 million people.

In some ways, Africa’s hunger problem is really a food spoilage problem.

And when you peek under the hood, it becomes clear…

Most fresh vegetables rot within three days without refrigeration.

Cassava starts to rot within 48 hours if kept at room temperature.

Tomatoes and fruits take from two to seven days.

And most grains, like rice and beans, grow mold in two weeks.

Why? Because Africa’s biggest crop killer isn’t drought or pests.

It’s infrastructure—or the lack of it.

In other parts of the world, harvested food gets put through something called a “cold chain”.

This is a series of refrigeration systems that keep food cold from the moment it leaves the farm till it gets to the table.

But in Africa, this cold chain doesn’t exist.

So, once food gets harvested here, the death clock starts ticking.

Because only 5% of perishable food in Africa is kept cold, compared to 90% in Europe.

The problem of keeping food cold is compounded by the need to transport it.

Only 20% of roads in Africa are paved, meaning food travels much longer than it should to reach markets.

Harvests typically travel 4,000 kilometres over 23 days to reach final consumers, eight times more than in Europe.

With these big infrastructure gaps, it’s no shock that tonnes of food fall by the wayside. Literally.

The waste leaves behind a lot of empty plates and empty pockets.

In Rwanda, farmers often have to sell their harvest at 10% their original price to prevent losing all of it to spoilage.

And because of the scarcity that follows mass spoilage, consumers pay high prices for food like tomatoes, which farmers make in abundance. 

It’s an infrastructure problem, but it’s causing big human problems.

Africa’s food spoilage costs us $4 billion each year.

But that’s just money.

All that waste has a real impact on the environment, too.

One of the biggest contributors to climate change is methane gas. And it’s released when food decay.

When tonnes of food decay, lots of methane gas is released, contributing to the trapping of heat in our atmosphere.

For a continent that needs a manufactured winter to keep its food cold, food spoilage is creating a future where food is even more likely to get spoiled.

And then, there’s the human factor.

Every hungry child is a dent in Africa’s health numbers, educational outcomes, and life expectancy.

When you add the cumulative effect of all these, $4 billion seems like a small estimate. 

Some sources estimate that if Africa cuts its food waste in half, it could unlock $20 billion a year in economic growth and open up millions of jobs.

But keeping food cold is a question of infrastructure.

It costs over $200,000 to build a standard cold room.

Many African smallholder farmers, who make up 80% of the farming workforce, don’t even make 1% of that in revenue each year.

For them, a cold room is out of the question. So they hope for the best, and sell their harvest at steep discounts while people in homes starve.

But recently, some companies have been giving these farmers the tools to fight back.

Ayoola Dominic didn’t set out to save Africa’s harvest.

His startup, Koolboks, started life selling fancy camping coolers to Europeans on vacation.

But when Dominic returned home to Nigeria, he saw something that shook him.

He visited a local market and saw food rotting in the open air before anyone could buy it.

And he quickly saw that the real problem was heat, because most people in markets couldn’t afford a fridge.

This sparked a question for Ayoola and his co-founder, Deborah Gael:

If we can keep champagne chilled on a French campsite, why can’t we keep tilapia cold in a Lagos market?

The company re-engineered its product for Africa’s frontline food fight:

It’s cooling as a service, not a luxury.

But with many smallholder farmers earning less than $100 a month, how do you convince them that even a pay-as-you-go model is worth the risk?

Dominic explains that it’s about changing the conversation entirely:

And the impact?

Koolboks has deployed more than 10,000 freezers across 25 countries.

Women selling fish no longer wake up dreading the sun.

Milk producers keep stock fresh for days, not hours.

Farmers get better prices because they don’t have to dump their harvest in a panic sale.

What started as a camping gadget has become one of Africa’s sharpest weapons against hunger and waste.

When asked about the most fulfilling part of the journey, Dominic shared a powerful memory:

But Koolboks isn’t the only company trying to help Africa cut down on food waste.

ColdHubs builds solar-powered walk-in cold rooms in markets and farm clusters. 

Farmers pay a daily fee per crate stored. 

Shelf life stretches from 2 days to 21, reducing losses by 80%.

There’s also SokoFresh in Kenya, which offers cold-as-a-service for smallholders, renting solar-powered cold rooms by the kilo. 

It’s like Airbnb for refrigeration

Together, these companies prove a point: the spoilage problem is solvable. 

As long as we leverage technology.

Food waste is Africa’s quiet catastrophe.

It drains billions, chokes the climate with methane, and leaves millions hungry.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The world solved spoilage before: with highways, reefer trucks, and industrial warehouses.

Today, we have better, cheaper tools. And we’re starting to see them take off in Africa.

And if they work out, Africa can finally lose its $4 billion trash can.

What do you think about Africa’s food spoilage problem?

Let us know here.

Cheers,