Industry | Solar-powered cooling |
---|---|
Founded | 2015 |
Headquarters | Owerri, Imo State , Nigeria |
Area served | Nigeria |
Key people | Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu - CEO |
Website | www.coldhubs.com |
ColdHubs Ltd. is an Owerri-based company that provides solar-powered cold storage for small scale farmers.
ColdHubs was founded in 2015 in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. [1] [2] In addition to its headquarters, the company has offices in Fort Collins, Colorado. [3]
ColdHubs provides cooling services to small-scale farmers and fishermen, who rent 20 kg capacity crates to store their products at the hubs that are available all year round. [4] [5] [6]
ColdHubs operates at 54 locations, in 22 states throughout Nigeria, [7] with site locations near farms. [8] The three-metre-square units can each hold three tonnes of food. The sun's power cools the units during the day and charges the batteries that operate the refrigeration in the evening. [7] [9]
ColdHubs was founded and is run by former farmer Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu. [1] [2] As of 2021, it employed 66 people. [10]
In 2017, ColdHubs was shortlisted for the UK Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. [11] [12] It won the 2020 Waislitz Global Citizen Disruptor Award [13] and was the inaugural AYuTe Africa Challenge winner in 2021. [7]
The gross domestic product (GDP) of Niger was $16.617 billion US dollars in 2023, according to official data from the World Bank. This data is based largely on internal markets, subsistence agriculture, and the export of raw commodities: foodstuffs to neighbors and raw minerals to world markets. Niger, a landlocked West African nation that straddles the Sahel, has consistently been ranked on the bottom of the Human Development Index, at 0.394 as of 2019. It has a very low per capita income, and ranks among the least developed and most heavily indebted countries in the world, despite having large raw commodities and a relatively stable government and society not currently affected by civil war or terrorism. Economic activity centers on subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, re-export trade, and export of uranium.
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