2023-05-29 12:11:01
Every year, 420,000 Nigerians die after consuming heat-spoiled food. The start-up ColdHubs markets cold rooms powered by solar energy. A solution to prevent fruits and vegetables from spoiling before they even reach the market stalls, in this major producer country in West Africa which is finding it increasingly difficult to feed its population, reports the American online magazine “Roads and Kingdoms”.
[Cet article est extrait du hors-série n°95 de Courrier international “À table !”, consacré à l’alimentation de demain à l’heure de la crise climatique, au soft power de la gastronomie et à un alléchant tour du monde en recettes et portraits de chefs.]
At the Obinze fruit and vegetable market [ville située dans le sud-est du Nigeria, près de la ville d’Owerri, dans l’État d’Imo], haggling is in full swing in the morning. Small traders, from remote villages and the outskirts of Imo State in southeastern Nigeria and north of the city of Port Harcourt, crowd around the market in search of bargains and fruit. costs.
On wooden stalls, under a covered space built with stilts, rusty sheet metal and a tarpaulin with holes, dozens of vendors present salads, Chinese cabbage, red cabbage, green beans, onions, cabbage. flower, strawberries and broccoli.
Three women form a semi-circle – their waists wrapped in wax fabric [imprimé africain] multicolored with tiny checks – in front of half a dozen raffia baskets filled with juicy tomatoes. In the earthen floor, the juice leaves winding tracks that dry in the sun, which is beginning to beat down on the city of 950,000 inhabitants.
Piles of perishable products
North of Obinze, Owerri’s strategic location and its glitzy hotels have allowed it to become a mecca for hotels and restaurants, and to attract the wealthy classes from the neighboring commercial towns of Aba, Nnewi and Onitsha, as well as the oil town of Port Harcourt.
Nevertheless, the open-air markets of fresh produce, such as that of Obinze – essential for supplying the customers who come to Owerri – still dominate the food economy.
Near the market exit in Obinze, a group of handlers unload bags of cabbage into the field. Muhammed Usman, 32, sees his products on higher and higher piles. Before overturning one of the bags, he cuts the ties that close it with a knife: inside, there is damaged green cabbage which gives off a strong unpleasant smell. The top layers of the vegetable have rotted, yellowed, and come apart. These cabbages have lost their green color and no longer form a tight ball.
“Many were damaged,” observes Muhammed Usman taking one of the cabbages. He says something in a low voice, but his apprentice understands the instructions, takes a penknife and begins to cut them, layer by layer.
A pig farmer approaches, interested in the pile of rotten cabbage. “Now it’s pig food”, concludes Muhammad Usman.
The “Midnight Refreshment”
As elsewhere in developing countries, much of the food produced in Nigeria is lost before and after it reaches markets, due to post-harvest logistical difficulties. Fruits and vegetables are particularly fragile. Farmers lose N3.5 trillion (6.9 billion euros) every year from food that goes to waste, experts say. It is considerable.
“Growing and selling fruit is a high-risk business,” confirms Muhammed Usman, who until 2016 was losing about 300,000 naira (600 euros) from his production every month.
And he is far from alone in this case. Half a dozen fruit producers and vendors in the markets and market gardening sites visited report losses at different levels. Many of them find themselves over-indebted and have suffered losses forcing them to give up their business and their holdings.
The multiplication of losses has pushed farmers and traders to seek solutions. Some have chosen to spray water to cool the fruit, but this is the so-called “midnight refreshment” which became the most popular: at night, unsold goods were spread out on the floors, carpets and tarpaulins at the Obinze market and in other places. “It was not very conclusive”, moderates Ibrahim Danladi, a fruit seller for six years.
This method exposed the fruits to the humidity of the night winds, but also to rodents, snakes, cockroaches and ants. These pests eat the fruits and contaminate them, urinate and defecate on them, and burrow into their thin skins. As a result, fruits and vegetables taste bad, smell bad, discolored and contaminated. “Customers complained a lot, testifies Ibrahim Danladi. Lots of vegetables were spoiled, especially green beans.”
“Bush Radio”
Twenty-five years ago, neither Muhammed Usman nor Ibrahim Danladi knew Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, executive director of the NGO The Smallholders Foundation, which in Imo State works to develop sustainable agriculture with farmers rural. The world of smallholders, especially in rural populations, fascinated Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, now founder and CEO of ColdHubs.
In 2003, he created a local radio, which he used to exchange with farmers and advise them. He traveled to the villages to learn about their views, air their concerns and listen to their stories.
Each episode of his “bush radio” addressed what he had learned. He was convinced that tackling the problems he had witnessed in these markets and in these rural communities required extraordinary measures. Graduated with a master’s degree in development and cooperation from the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, Italy, he was promised good job offers in Europe.
His decision to stay in Nigeria to devote himself to non-polluting refrigeration techniques, in 2015, surprised more than one in his entourage. “Some thought I was crazy at the time. My sister thought it made no sense,” he remembers.
54 cold rooms
That year, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu created ColdHubs, which markets solar-powered cold rooms. Thanks to this equipment, the shelf life of fruits and vegetables is up to twenty-one days, compared to about two days. This social enterprise has a subscription model whose price depends on the quantities stored: farmers or traders pay around 0.46 euro cents for a plastic box of 20 kilos stored overnight.
These reusable plastic crates with integrated handles are perforated on the sides to improve ventilation. For meat or seafood, the storage rate is 1.20 euros per night.
Each cold room can store three tons of goods. The energy produced by its 120 millimeter solar panels, installed on the roof of the cold room, is stored in high-capacity batteries. These in turn recharge an inverter which powers the refrigeration unit.
ColdHubs now manages a fleet of 54 cold rooms in Nigeria, twelve times more than
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