Fish nourish over 10.2 million people in Uganda, supplied primarily from small-scale fisheries and increasingly from aquaculture. However, fish loss is 20-40%, primarily because of the lack of cold chain logistics. With aquaculture booming in Uganda, the need for ‘first’ and ‘last mile’ cold-chain transport equipment is critical in extending the shelf life of fish, reducing food waste, providing sustainable transport for food, improving livelihoods and creating economic opportunities within off-grid and weak-grid areas.
Current strategies have several limitations. While cooling solutions exist, they are too expensive for most potential users. Fish preservation methods such as drying can reduce the nutritional amino-acid profile of fish by up to 50%. Increasing fresh fish access has public health and wellbeing benefits, especially for women and children.
RADiCool uses Phase Change Material in various re-usable shapes to chill fish quickly and maintain temperatures within insulated boxes. The RADiCool technology was tested in a range of use-cases across the multitude of fish transporters who primarily use motorbikes to move fish from landing sites to market. It aimed to determine if the novel refrigerated transport solution could cut fish spoilage by extending the products’ shelf-life, allowing vendors and customers longer to purchase a nutritionally valuable and highly desirable product.
There are three challenges that RADiCool trials set out to solve:
Can this appliance accelerate the ability of the fisheries and aquaculture industries to meet customer and producer’s need for an affordable, efficient means to reduce fish waste in weak and off grid areas in East Africa? This solution is designed to be affordable to the mass fish market, increases post-harvest resilience and reduces environmental impact. Further piloting of this innovation will test viable business models that can enable ‘last’ and ‘first’ mile transport of fresh fish in East Africa.