Koolboks: Refrigerating Africa

Sea Change Radio

This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a break from worrying about the election and look beyond these shores. First, we speak to Ayoola Dominic, the CEO and Co-Founder of Koolboks – an innovative refrigeration solution for the large swaths of sub-Saharan Africa that don’t have reliable access to electricity. We get an in-depth look at the company’s technology, learn about the challenges they’re facing and discuss the relationship between Koolboks and the Clinton Global Initiative. Then, we revisit part of our 2023 conversation with author Tim Killeen who has chronicled efforts to curb deforestation in the Amazon.

Narrator | 00:02 – This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.

Ayoola Dominic (AD) | 00:17 -So what Koolboks has done is we’ve integrated for the first time in freezers, lithium-ion batteries. So what happens is when you have power, you can connect them to the grid, and when we don’t have power you can actually charge with the solar panels.

Narrator | 00:35 – This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a break from worrying about the election and look beyond these shores. First, we speak to Ayoola Dominic, the CEO and Co-founder of Koolboks, an innovative refrigeration solution for the large swaths of Sub-Saharan Africa that don’t have reliable access to electricity. We get an in-depth look at the company’s technology, learn about the challenges they’re facing, and discuss the relationship between Koolboks and the Clinton Global Initiative. Then we revisit part of our 2023 conversation with author Tim Killeen, whose chronicled efforts to curb deforestation in the Amazon.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:37 – I’m joined now on Sea Change. Radio by Ayoola Dominic. He’s the CEO and Co-founder of KoolBoks. Ayoola, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Ayoola Dominic (AD) | 01:47 – Thank you so much, Alex, for having me.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:49 – It’s a pleasure to have you. Why don’t you explain to us what Koolboks is, and if you can summarize what your product is all about, that would be great.

Ayoola Dominic (AD) | 01:58 – So I’ll, I’ll start with, uh, a bit of a context. So in, in Sub-Saharan Africa, you have over 600 million people that lacks access to electricity and therefore lacks access to refrigeration. Um, as compared to Europe and America, where you have a hundred percent penetration in refrigeration in Sub-Saharan Africa, you’ll be shocked to know that it’s only 17%. I repeat only 17% of the people have access to refrigeration.

Alex Wise (AW) | 02:30 – We’re talking permanent refrigeration, like you have a refrigerator running 24 7, right?

Ayoola Dominic (AD) | 02:36 – Correct. And you obviously, we know what that means in terms of food wastage. About a third of all food is wasted before it gets to market. And we’re talking small restaurants, we’re talking small bars, and these are things that normally we would take for granted in the West, but it’s a real problem in Africa. So, um, looking to solve this problem, myself and my co-founder, like three years ago, designed to found a company called the Koolboks. And the goal was to make refrigeration affordable and accessible to everyone that needs it. So using the sun and water, which is abundant in Africa, we created a solution that is able to generate refrigeration for up to four days, whether or not you have power, whether or not you have sunlight. And this we did by storing energy in the form of ice as opposed to just storing energy in the form of batteries. But of course, looking at the peculiarity of the customers we serve, then the big question, I mean, what good is the technology if no one can afford it? So what we did was we integrated in our units a pay as you go technology enabling individuals and small businesses to be able to pay as low as 10 to $15 every month to own a refrigerator. And today we’ve deployed in over 6,000, um, units across 26 countries in only three years, and we’re still doing more actually. So that’s what we do, basically. I dunno if that is pretty clear, Alex.

AW | 04:12 – Well, let’s break down the technology a little bit more if you can. How does it differ from a very well insulated, cooler? Cooler technology has really come quite away. People who go to concerts or festivals can put, uh, ice in their cooler and it’ll still be cold three or four days later, correct?

AD | 04:29 – That’s a very good question. Actually, the concept was going from that same concept like, so what we have today is, um, what we adopted from the concept of cooling in vaccines. So we just took them and adopted them for restoration. So, um, the only basic difference here would be that beyond thick insulation, you have what we call face change materials, we can call it ice, but it’s not really ice, but is liquid with, um, that is able to retain temperatures for longer hours because they are water mixed with esters. And these are able to conserve, um, temperatures for longer hours. So that you would say is the basic difference between the two, apart from the insulation, the fact that we actually use what we call, um, uh, face change materials, basically.

AW | 05:26 – And you mentioned the price is monthly, but what is the overall cost and how do the most vulnerable populations get access to it? 10 to $15 a month may not sound a lot to somebody in the west, but it could be very expensive to somebody in Sub-Saharan Africa. What is the overall cost of this unit?

AD | 05:45 – Now? The average cost, thank you for that question is around a thousand dollars to about $1,300, and this could be spread over, um, over three years, sometimes over four years. So that’s the average person and the average income is usually around 30 to $50 a month rather some 30 to $50 a day depending on the, on the size of the units, basically?

AW | 06:14 – The income that it produces, you mean?

AD | 06:17 – The income of the small, because our, our, we’re focused on small businesses that require refrigeration for income generation. So we’re talking about bars, small restaurants, and the average income daily is like $30 a day on their average, depending on the size. And, uh, if you multiply that by maybe 20, that’s about $600 in a month, um, for the active days. And they get to pay about, I mean, 15 to 20 to $30 per month for the refrigerator.

AW | 06:47 – And, and how do they get delivery of the refrigerator? What’s your distribution model, Ayoola?

AD | 06:53 – Great question. So we do work through partners, existing solar distributors in different countries. Uh, these are distributors that have distribution network and they deal with the kind of customers we want to deal with. And that’s how we’ve been working with them. So we have big players, um, that are big in solar. They sell solar panels, they sell solar home systems as well. We leverage on their network to be able to reach our customers, basically.

AW | 07:21 – And, and you mentioned the space age technology. Why don’t you break that down a little bit more for us? What do you have in the units in terms of lithium ion batteries and solar panels? Explain how this all works if you can.

AD | 07:34 – So basically, today we have different customers and there’s different customers have different needs. So some, like rightly observed, just want to cool. There are the beverage dealers. They don’t want to get their bottles broken, so they just want to cool. And then you have customers that wanna freeze, and these are customers that require longer cooling hours, like freezing, we require longer freezing hours. So in that situation, they will need external lithium batteries. So for customers that want to cool the ice batteries, which you rightly observed, uh, is enough, is sufficient for them. But then when we’re talking about respecting the cold chain, that means literally we have to have lithium battery. So what Koolboks has done is we’ve integrated for the first time in freezers, lithium batteries. So you actually do know that you have lithium batteries in those freezers. So what happens is when you have power, you can connect them to the grid, and we don’t have power you can actually charge with solar panels. And beyond that, we also have the, the ice batteries combined, combined with the lithium batteries to give them optimum energy efficiency. Beyond that, we also have the pay-go technology, which enables us to understand the temperature in the refrigerator, understand the billing of the customer, understand when the customer opens or closes the freezers. The location of the freezers is extremely vital, particularly for after sale services. So, so I don’t know if that explains your question, or maybe I’m not answering your question precisely.

AW | 09:10 – No, and you did, but also it, it, it goes back to answering my initial question about how it differs from coolers. Like a, a cooler, you can’t freeze, you can’t produce ice. So that actually can perpetuate the cooling cycle for much longer. I imagine if you’re making ice, then it has a lot more use than just an ice box, a traditional what a lot of refrigeration was in North America in 1900, let’s say. Right? Sure. So people would get big blocks of ice and put them in coolers, and that would suffice for, for back then. But producing that ice is a game changer.

AD | 09:50 – Exactly.

AW | 09:51 – But explain a little bit more how solar works in all of your technology, if you can, Ayoola.

AD | 09:57 – Awesome. So during the daytime, when you have the sun, the energy from the sun, which is solar energy, ice is made in that compartment, which is the ice batteries. So that at nights when the sun is not available, again, the energy stored in the ice, keep the product cool for the next couple of days. So that’s what solar does. So solar basically helps with the solar energy that is being connected, that has been converted to electrical energy to drive the compressors and also keep the refrigerator cool.

(Music Break) | 10:35

AW | 11:21 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I’m speaking to the CEO and Co-founder of KoolBoks, Ayoola Dominic. So Ayoola, if you can explain where you are as a business right now and your relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative, that would be helpful.

AD | 11:37 – Awesome. So we currently are just closed the funding of around, uh, $5 million Series A in equity. It’s part of a $21 million total funding round. And currently we are at the point of scaling. I think we’ve tested the product. We think we have a product market fit and we’re trying to scale at the moment. So with the Clinton Global Initiative, we’ve been invited to, um, to the program. I had about two speaking sessions on the product itself and the impact we’re trying to create, uh, without product. And this is my first time here basically, and we hope that we’ll be invited again next year.

AW | 12:22 – And you’re trying to do more than just be a cooler or, or a freezer for, for these populations that don’t have electricity, you’re trying to provide really a bridge to more modernization. Why don’t you explain if you can.

AD | 12:37 – So for, for us, basically we, I mean, we provide the energy and then they, um, in an in environment where energy is cost, whenever they have it, they try to take advantage of it, even if it’s to charge their phones, to light up their houses. As long as they have that energy, they are extra excited and that’s what we do. Uh, but beyond, beyond that, actually, what, what we’ve also seen is that with the data we’re collecting, we’re actually becoming a data hub for connection of customers. Because now data is at the core of what we do. Um, we have over 6,000 robots out there sending data every day. We know when they open their freezers, we know when they close their freezers, we know where the location of the freezer is, uh, we know the tempera changes refrigerators, and we’re talking about different people in the different value chains. So we’re looking at small holder farmers that are into livestock, why not connect them with a frozen food seller who buys directly from them at the best price? And we’re talking about frozen food seller. Why not connect that frozen food seller to a consumer who wants to buy units? Right? So because now we have everyone on that single platform and we’ve got data appliance manufacturers, we’re talking about lg, Samsung, why not connect them to customers that would like to get their appliances? So that’s how we’re seeing Koolboks. We’re morphing from what we call just a typical appliance manufacturer to a data hub where we get to empower our customers. And that’s what we’re beginning to see. We’ve seen customers request best prices for livestock. We’ve seen appliance manufacturers come to us to request for data. We’ve seen coaching manufacturers come to request for data because they want to expand their services and they want to get the best services. So that’s what we’ve been seeing, and that’s basically the future of Koolboks.

AW | 14:37 – And you, you’re talking about customers requesting information and how do you reach these customers and how do you gain awareness of your product in, in more remote areas?

AD | 14:49 – Yeah, basically through, uh, word of mouth radio does a huge amount of work. Uh, we do, uh, on ground awareness programs where we go to different markets. Uh, but now another trend we’re beginning to see that works really well is the internet, uh, because our customers are not necessarily in rural areas. They are customers in per urban areas that have challenges with electricity as well. So we’re beginning to see a huge uptake with per urban uptakers, particularly in cities like Lagos, a city like, uh, um, Kampala, uh, and these are cities that still have challenges with electricity.

AW | 15:23 – So these are very densely populated cities that just don’t have a very developed electrical grid.

AD | 15:32 – Exactly. The population sometimes is way more than what the grid can afford, can accommodate rather, and therefore, there’s a load shedding, which has to be applied so as to ensure that people have power.

AW | 15:48 – And you mentioned how this keeps refrigeration up to four days, but what happens after four days?

AD | 15:55 – Yeah, after four days, we believe that you, you must have at least sunlight or you probably would’ve found a grid to connect to.

AW | 16:04 – So it’s four days without sunlight.

AD | 16:06 – Correct.

AW | 16:07 – Assuming that there’s sun every few days, it lasts 365 days a year. Correct. Okay. I misunderstood that. I thought it was just like a four-day period, but it can last without the sun for four days. Is that right? Correct. So where do you envision this going, alum?

AD | 16:24 – Yeah. like I mentioned earlier, uh, I mean, Koolboks to a lot of people, um, might be just selling products, just selling freezers, but we’re a bit more than that. We’re actually there to ensure that people, or we believe that people should be able to make money, uh, from, from natural resources. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And beyond that, we are looking beyond Koolboks. We are looking at ensuring that we’re able to convert other refrigerators, um, to solar and doing so. We believe we’ll be able to have access to, um, more people and be able to reduce the problem of food wastage globally. But the global goal of Koolboks at the end of the day is to ensure that we reduce food wasted to the barest minimum across the globe.

AW | 17:20 – The company is Koolboks, that’s K-O-O-L-B-O-K-S. Ayoola Dominic, thanks so much for being my guest on Sea Change Radio.

AD | 17:29 – Thank you so much, Alex, for having me.

(Music Break) | 17:46

AW | 18:38 – I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by author and conservation scientist, Tim Killeen. Tim, welcome to See Change Radio.

Tim Killeen (TK) | 18:46 – Nice to meet you, Alex.

AW | 18:50 – It seems like anybody who, who studied the Amazon has to be very attuned to the interplay between the indigenous population there, the very fragile ecosystems and the market forces, the economics that are pushing and pushing constantly this area to the brink. Why don’t you give us a little bit of an overview on some of the policies that led us to where we are now. First, let’s focus on some of the more deleterious policies, if you can.

Tim Killeen (TK) | 19:21 – The rubber boom at the turn of the 19th, 20th century, was really what transformed the Amazon before there was diseases and stuff like this and missionaries and things, but you know, with the rubber boom, there was this big influx of European and migrants went into the region to exploit rubber. Uh, there was a second boom during World War ii, and so this really seriously negatively impacted the indigenous people. This is, you know, they were already impacted by the, you know, the great die off following the Colombian exchange. But then this, you know, it kind of happened all again in the rubber booms. And then what really, uh, got things going was in the 1960s and seventies, all of these countries, their governments, many of military governments at this point in time decided that they had kind of dual issues of, of over, they were concerned about the population growth and inequality, and there was a big agitation for land reform. And so one of the ways they responded to those threats was to open up the Amazon build highways into the Amazon and give land away to everyone wanted to go down there and knock down the forest and cultivate plants or grow cows or whatever. And, and so that started in the late sixties, really picked up speed in the seventies, exploded into the eighties, and just, it’s continued on after on, there’s been ups and downs with the rates of migration. There was a massive, you know, millions of people moved into the Amazon in the 19, late in the 1970s. It kind of dropped off in the 1990s, and now it’s kind of an internal growth, lots of internal migration. And, oh, starting about 1990, about 1990, I guess, uh, we started having the cultivation of intensive crops like soybeans. So it’s a combination of policies, investments in infrastructure. I’m a scientist, so I study nature, but there are other scientists who study crops and cultivation. And so they, they developed very successful varieties of soybeans and breeds of cows that were well adapted to the region and, and started generating very significant amounts of cash flow that, uh, benefited the people who were, were moving into the area, benefited the economies of the country. And so things kept going. They got outta hand. And now we have this before station crisis, which has been evolving for, you know, at least 35, 40 years. And, uh, like I said, ups and downs and, uh, and, and the, in the late aughts and the early teens, uh, there was an enormous, uh, decrease in deforestation due to policy changes in Brazil. But then, you know, there’s been kind of a backlash and things are going in the other direction again. And, and, uh, people were very concerned, me amongst them. , I’m very concerned about the fate of the Amazon.

AW | 22:09 – So Tim, we’re talking about the policies that led to the deforestation in the Amazon. What are some of the ones that you cover in the book and that we all should be aware of?

TK | 22:19 – Yeah, no, the, the most, the most obvious and, and, uh, infamous one was the decision to build highways and the Brazilian, uh, military government in the 1970s, uh, they actually had, uh, deliberate policies to build. They, they say, you know, uh, people without land should live in the land without people is, was their view of it. And so they built highways specifically into remote areas, and specifically along their frontier areas, like a border between Bolivia and, and, uh, Brazil or the border between a Brazil and, and sa Venezuela. They specifically created colonies. They called them colonies back then, and people to move there. First they encourage small holders as a way to, uh, relieve some of the social pressures and some of in their, in their, uh, more settled areas. But then they realized that it was more profitable, if I can say that to give away land to, uh, large landowners. And so they fostered then a, uh, an additional policy in, in addition to the one that giving land to, to poor people, they get started giving a land away to corporation and, um, you know, literally giving it to them, in fact, actually giving them money to develop it. There was a, there was an institution called Sudan and Brazil, and, and where they provided tax credits and, and subsidized loans to people who’d go in and that help them, you know, build a local road, you know, from first they built the, the, the interstate highway system. And then they started building local roads and gave money to people who were willing to cut down the forest and grow cows. Basically, both the large and small scale and similar type things happened in Bolivia, Peru, and, and Columbia. Um, simultaneously they were developing their mineral assets. There’s parts of Peru that are, just have these terrifically rich iron ore deposits. There’s other parts with copper reserves, nickel, uh, aluminum. There’s very large aluminum deposits, uh, situated. Just, you know, basically in the tur above, right near the Amazon River, some of the largest aluminum mines in the world, in the Amazon and bide mines actually. And similar things happen in Peru, uh, where they have big copper mines, and those are up in the Andes, but they’re part of the Amazon because they’re the Amazon basin. I treat them as being part of the Amazon. And that water flows downhill and goes into the Amazon. And certainly culturally, the Indian, the indigenous people, the of the Highlands, or now migrating massively into the, the lowlands of the, of the Peruvian Amazon have been doing it for 20 or 30 years. Most of the small holders, most of them poor people moving from rural areas. And, and where there’s a lot of land tension, and there’s been very conflicting whether there was the Civil War in per, during the, during the 1990s with the Ciera Lumino. So, so part of the policy response to that type of, of social upheaval was, Hey, go to the Amazon and, and we’ll give you land. And so these were policies that seemed coherent to their leaders of the time, and they’re having the consequences now of this ever increasing population of farmers and ranchers, uh, that are settling along highways or mining. There’s also this massive, uh, informal gold mining community. And all of the countries, all nine countries have very large population of what they call wildcat miners. These are smaller operations still industrialized. I estimate there’s about 450,000 people engaged in the, in the, in the small scale mining industry. And that’s, uh, and generating a lot of, a lot of money. And so it’s a part of this phenomenon. And of course, governments, if, you know, they don’t foster it, they certainly tolerate it, you know, because they’re, you know, there’s so many of them and they’re well organized and, uh, you know, local unions and stuff. And so it’s difficult to, uh, say, oh, no, we don’t want you to do that, because these people are, they vote and, uh, they’re also, uh, volatile. They, they’re, they’re willing to, uh, you know, blockade roads and stuff to, uh, protect their production systems. So those are, you know, one set of policies. And, uh, there’s other, you know, like Brazil has this policy to generate electricity through, through dams. So they built lots of dams in the Amazon, which have their own, uh, impact and not on deforestation, but they certainly lay a impede the, the, the river system or the, the aquatic ecosystems that are dependent upon the river. There’s all kinds of migratory fish. You build a dam, you mess with their life, life cycle. And, and so that’s another group of policies this time, energy, um, it that disrupt, you know, uh, an aquatic system that also discovered, uh, oil. And, and Texaco, for instance, in the 1950s, discovered oil and Ecuador. And Ecuador is a member of OPEC. And so they’ve, you know, all, most of their oil comes from the Amazon, Peru, similar Columbia, Bolivia, you know, even, and Brazil’s got this very large natural gas fed field right in the heart of the Amazon. And, um, they generate money for the state and tax revenues and royalty revenues. Uh, but, you know, uh, a lot of toxic chemicals and secondary impacts, of course, you have, you know, if you have an oil well, you need to have a road to the oil well, so people settle along the road. So just all these things kind of feeding off one on the other. And we end up with the situation where we have an Amazon, there’s probably about 20% deforested, 18, 19% they figure, which doesn’t seem a lot, but it’s, you know, it’s also highly fragmented. If, if you look at the, you know, the penetration of the roads and the, and the area that’s, you know, maybe more like 40% of the Amazon has been impacted by some sort of human activity.

AW | 27:57 – Tim Killeen, thanks so much for being my guest on Sea Change Radio.

TK | 28:01 – Thanks for having me.

AW | 28:17 – You’ve been listening to Sea Change Radio. Our intro music is by Sanford Lewis, and our outro music is by Alex Wise. Additional music by The Clash, T-Bone Walker, and Paul Simon. To read a transcript of this show, go to SeaChangeRadio.com stream, or download the show, or subscribe to our podcast on our site, or visit our archives to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gavin Newsom, Stewart Brand, and many others. And tune in to Sea Change Radio next week as we continue making connections for sustainability. For Sea Change Radio, I’m Alex Wise.