In many rural communities around the world, small-scale farmers working in areas with limited infrastructure struggle to store their harvest. Communities in hot, arid climates, without access to electricity, see much of their perishable produce spoil before it can be taken to market.
Moses Kansanga, an associate professor of geography and international affairs at George Washington University, has developed an innovative solar-powered cold storage solution to help address this issue. Without refrigeration, many smallholder farmers lose a significant portion of their crops, which reduces the food available for their families and limits what they can sell to earn an income.
Kansanga has worked with farmers since early in his career. His interest in agriculture was shaped by his own lived experiences. He grew up in northern Ghana, in a semi-arid region where climate challenges made farming difficult and often led to food insecurity.
“Very early in my life, I found myself confronting these challenges and thinking why my context is unique,” Kansanga said. “And I'd always wanted to be a researcher. I knew I wanted to investigate these issues and work with others to contribute solutions.”
He believes research should improve real-world conditions, and as an environmental geographer, his work is driven by a desire to create solutions for under-resourced communities.
Over the years, Kansanga’s work has focused on blending traditional farming methods with modern innovations to help build stronger, more resilient systems for smallholder farmers to improve production.
But he realized that a major challenge for farmers was happening after the harvest.
“I realized that a lot of food was going to waste,” Kansanga said. “And if we can save this food, that means more food available in the market and prices are going to be at least manageable. That means more food is available at the household level in these smallholder farmer communities. And that's what motivated me to start considering how to extend the shelf life of perishable produce.”
In many of the rural areas where Kansanga works, electricity is unreliable or nonexistent. Reaching markets can also be a major hurdle.
“From our baseline data with over a thousand farmers, the average distance is 21 kilometers,” Kansanga said. “Women mostly will carry agricultural produce, perishables on their heads and walk to the markets.”
While some now use low-cost tricycles, many still rely on foot transport along degraded or flooded roads that have worsened due to climate change.
“One of the commonest things in the context that we work in is sometimes farmers can be cut off for weeks when there are torrential, unexpected rains,” Kansanga said. “If you are dealing with perishables, like tomatoes or peppers, and the rot begins before you can cross that river, you lose everything.”
That challenge inspired the idea for a solar-powered cold storage unit, which Kansanga began developing during a fellowship at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
“I had to think carefully about how to design a system that is sustainable but also cost-effective, that farmers can work with, especially since these are mostly people living on less than a dollar a day,” Kansanga said.
This past summer, Kansanga traveled to the Upper West Region of Ghana to prototype the system. Working with local technicians and using locally sourced materials, his team built a mobile, solar-powered cold storage unit designed for rural farming communities.
The unit uses solar panels installed on its roof to capture sunlight and convert it into energy, which powers the cooling system. During pre-testing, the unit reached internal temperatures as low as 3 degrees Celsius—37.4 degrees Fahrenheit—with the option to go lower depending on what crops are being stored.
“The biggest thing about this unit is it's not just sustainable, it's also mobile,” Kansanga said. “We can literally lift this and take it anywhere that we think there is the need. So, let's say if there's a glut of perishables in some part of a region, we can move it there to serve the farmers and then afterward take it to a central point.”
Because Kansanga wants this technology to benefit small farmers with limited resources, affordability was a key priority in its design. Once in use, the unit has no recurring energy costs, and the solar panels can last up to 15 to 20 years.
To reduce the financial burden on individual farmers, Kansanga’s team has explored a cooperative model in which members of a community pool resources to purchase and share a single unit. Many farmers were open to the idea.
“We did a baseline survey to even understand what the food loss situation looks like. We also wanted to understand the interest base for a technology like this,” Kansanga said. “We had close to 80 percent of farmers saying yes, they would pay to store their produce under a cooperative arrangement.”
Kansanga developed the prototype in Ghana because he wanted to use local resources and involve the local community in the project.
“Working with local people, local talent was important. People should have the knowledge to contribute to these innovations,” Kansanga said.
He partnered with students at the University for Business and Integrated Development Studies (UBIDS) in Wa Upper West Region, Ghana.
That has evolved into a long-term partnership between GW and UBIDS and the establishment of the GW–UBIDS Center for Sustainable Food Systems, which now hosts the cold storage prototype and ongoing research. Field trials for the unit are set to begin next summer and students from both GW and UBIDS will get to participate.
In the trials, in addition to tracking how long the cold storage can extend shelf life, Kansanga’s team will also study whether the storage preserves nutritional content in the produce. They’ll also lead training on how to repurpose spoiled crops.
“No matter what you do, at the end stage of the agricultural chain, some waste always accrues,” Kansanga said. “So we are also going to teach farmers how to convert that waste to some economic uses. Like converting it to animal food, livestock feed or composting. So even at the very worst, they can still use the lost produce for something.”
Ultimately, Kansanga hopes the project leads not only to improvements in food security and farmer income but also a more inclusive approach to scientific research.
“I also hope that socially, we are building local capacity,” Kansanga said. “Local people should participate and contribute their knowledge and expertise to the scientific process and contribute to how the solutions to the problems that confront them are approached.”
He also sees the project as a valuable experiential learning opportunity for GW students.
“Experiential learning is a big thing,” Kansanga said. “Anytime you get students out there to see the abstract things that we talk about in class, the theoretical things, if students see that in the real world, it’s just always a game changer.”