BusinessDay
BusinessDay
January 23, 2026
Nonprofits backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank have won tens of millions of dollars to boost the productivity of African farmers using an array of solar-power devices.
Solar-powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps and grain mills are being rolled out across six African nations — Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo — through a program managed by Clasp, a Washington DC-based non-profit focused on energy efficiency.
The program, which has completed a two-year pilot and is now rolling out, has secured $50 million from the World Bank to expand in Nigeria and the Rockefeller Foundation may add to the $12 million it has allocated.
“There is always the ability to scale that up,” Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in Nairobi on Jan. 15 at a facility operated by SokoFresh, which runs solar-powered cold rooms to preserve farm produce for sale and export. “There’ll be more resources country by country as well” as the program expands, he said.
The Productive Use Financing Facility, or Puff, falls under the umbrella of Mission 300, a program backed by the World Bank and African Development Bank to mobilize tens of billions of dollars to bring electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030. At almost 600 million people, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than 80% of those without access to power globally.

The Puff program provides grants, subsidies and technical assistance to suppliers and distributors to make solar equipment more affordable. Between 2022 and 2024, in its pilot stage, it supported 24 businesses including SokoFresh across the six countries.
“We finance the innovations and the new projects and the new ideas that governments and the World Bank and others can take to scale,” Shah said at a farm where SokoFresh has installed a solar-powered cold room, which stores herbs such as cilantro and basil before they are exported.
SokoFresh, which is based in Nairobi, serves about 19,000 farmers. The lack of refrigeration plays a part in the about 40% loss experienced by farmers across sub-Saharan Africa, said Denis Karema, SokoFresh’s chief executive officer.
“It’s a very good deal for them,” Karema said of the farmers. “It’s catalyzing demand for their products.”
Kenya’s horticulture industry accounts for about $1 billion in exports annually, ranging from avocados and vegetables to cut flowers.

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