UNEP promotes equitable and sustainable cold-chain solutions through its United for Efficiency (U4E) initiative. Along with partners in the UK and Rwanda, U4E has established the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) to develop and accelerate the uptake of sustainable cold-chain solutions in the agriculture and health sectors throughout Africa and India.
Working with governments, industry, academia, communities, and other stakeholders, ACES is a comprehensive hub for state-of-the-art technical assistance and knowledge transfer along the ‘farm-to-fork’ continuum.
The core structure of ACES is a Centre of Excellence with collaborative research, testing of new equipment, development of knowledge and delivery of training programmes as well as awareness raising. ACES is complemented with Specialized Outreach and Knowledge Establishments (SPOKEs) where solutions are demonstrated into rural communities to share knowledge with local markets in order to accelerate deployment of sustainable smart cold-chain. The first of these is currently being developed in Kenya.
Clean Cooling Knowledge Platform
The aim of the CCN Knowledge Platform will be to act as an easy-to-use, curated repository and access point for training materials, tools, data, papers, technical information, industry innovations and expert presentations. It will serve some components directly, such as bespoke sector-specific tools, and for other data it will act as a gateway to partners in academia, government and industry. Custom authorisation rules will be in place so as to only permit relevant access to each user group, as it will support a wide range of users and content types.
Current examples of first component applications include:
Training materials
Needs Assessment tool
Horizon scanning Tool
Business Model Tool
Product Readiness Level (PRL) assessment
Virtual Model Design Tool
Cold-chain technology database
ACES Photo Library / Agency
Bespoke MSc Course
Chillies being dried and sorted
Workers packing green beans