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As global food demand rises, Africa has the potential to become a key player in meeting supply needs. However, building a resilient and sustainable cold chain is essential to reducing post-harvest food loss, ensuring food security and expanding trade. Paul Matthew, Global Cold Chain Alliance director for Africa explores the challenges and opportunities in developing Africa’s temperature-controlled logistics sector and the urgent need for energy resilience.

Global food demand is rising as the world’s population continues to grow, and food supply chain resilience is increasingly challenged by changing weather patterns and geopolitics. With vast agricultural potential, Africa has great capacity to play a leading role in meeting global food demand. To do so, it is essential that the continent’s food industry and governments work together to tackle post-harvest food loss and develop a safe, sustainable and resilient food supply chain.

An effective cold chain is the foundation of achieving this, and it is key to realising both regional and global opportunities. Temperature-controlled logistics is central to safely storing and transporting perishable goods, maximising the availability and shelf-life of food and very substantially reducing post-harvest loss and waste.

The role of temperature-controlled logistics

Our industry is also vital to economic growth and trade across the continent. Trade opportunities within Africa are growing, with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) facilitating trade by reducing tariffs and improving market access. There is scope for a major increase in intra-continent trade on temperature-controlled products.

The cold chain in Africa is growing year on year, with substantial investments into launching new temperature-controlled operations as well as into expanding established businesses. The opportunity for Africa to develop a robust and effective cold chain network and become the ‘food basket of the world’ is exciting, but there are significant challenges that businesses and governments need to tackle together.

Overcoming energy challenges

Reliable access to energy is a core requirement for keeping food refrigerated in storage and in transportation. Parts of the continent are not covered by the electrical grid and in areas that are covered, power can be unreliable.

A new GCCA Africa report has laid bare the impacts on the cold chain over the past two years of the worsening energy crisis and the increase in load-shedding. Frequent power outages during load-shedding strain refrigeration equipment, and lead to increased maintenance and breakdowns in cold chain operations. Our report showed that the impacts have been particularly severe in Botswana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The cold chain in Africa can invest in on site energy generation and in resilience to energy blackouts and load-shedding through a range of approaches and technologies. These investments will give temperature-controlled logistics operators greater scope to keep providing their vital services and to keep the food supply chain running, and even to expand into new areas. However, these operators need governments to implement the policy decisions that will allow them to make these investments and prepare for further energy disruptions.

To this end, GCCA is calling on governments throughout Africa to implement a suite of policy measures designed to enable and support cold chain businesses to improve resilience to energy supply disruption by investing in on-site renewable energy generation.

Measures should include extending Renewable Energy Incentives, providing tax credits for cold chain businesses investing in renewable energy, and establishing a funding mechanism for energy-efficient technologies and storage solutions. We also want to see a suspension of import duties and Value-Added Tax on batteries and solar components for one year. Governments should also make use of the cold chain’s potential as an energy storage medium through demand-side management strategies.

Policy support for a stronger cold chain

We are also urging governments across Africa to implement a series of policies that will help reduce the extent of the disruption to temperature-controlled logistics in the event of future blackouts. Measures should include implementation of intelligent technology for real-time monitoring and data sharing in the cold chain, and optimising trade facilitation to reduce wait times at border posts.

Africa’s food supply chain resilience would also benefit from government-industry collaboration to increase investment into the training and development of cold chain technicians for repairs, maintenance and technical innovation.

Improving energy access and resilience through measures such as these are a key element of GCCA Africa’s 2024 Call to Action which sets out how governments and the temperature-controlled logistics industry can work together to secure the major economic, social and environmental benefits of expanding the cold chain in Africa.

A call to action

Reliable access to energy is essential for the African cold chain to increase its crucial role in strengthening the continent’s economy, improving food security and supporting the aims of AfCFTA.

Africa has the potential to play a major role in meeting growing food demand within Africa and globally, but this vision depends on further development of a robust cold chain industry. Addressing the energy challenge is crucial.

As 2024 draws to an end and we look to 2025, GCCA will continue to engage with governments, development agencies and other policy makers throughout Africa on this issue and urge them to support and deliver these much-needed cold chain energy resilience policy actions.