Technology for the energy transition. This is the theme of the Start Up Energy Transition Award (SET Award), which recently unveiled its Top 100 innovations in the fields of smart agriculture, the circular economy, CO2 sequestration, energy efficiency in buildings and electric mobility. In total, eleven solutions from African start-ups were awarded.
These include Kenyan company BasiGo, which locally assembles electric buses to improve public transport, and start-up Mega Gas Alternative Energy, which specialises in clean cooking solutions. The start-up created by Kenyan Peter Njeri transforms Nairobi’s waste into biogas in order to offer disadvantaged households alternatives to charcoal and wood for cooking, the combustion of which promotes air pollution.
There is also the Coldbox Store developed by the eponymous start-up based in Enugu State, Nigeria. This off-grid cold storage solution facilitates the preservation of food products to combat food waste at a time when 25 million people in Africa’s largest economy are at risk of hunger, according to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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Other African climate innovations in the SET Awards 2023 global ranking include Standard Microgrid Zambia’s smart meters, a technology that optimises energy consumption for people in the Zambian capital Lusaka. The event is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy via the German Energy Agency (DENA). For this 7th edition, the jury was made up of Jane Wu, the Executive Director of the Venture Cup China investment fund, and Christoph Wolff, the Director of Development at the European Climate Foundation (ECF), among others.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi