Latest News and Events

Latest News

Rwanda’s Environment Minister opens Africa’s sustainable cooling and cold-chain centre

New centre will house ground-breaking facilities enabling the testing and certification of sustainable cooling equipment tailored to African needs

Delivering vaccines by drone in Rwanda | NIHR

Ground-breaking work by Dr Christopher Green, is looking at how future disease outbreaks might be better controlled using unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver vaccine doses to remote parts of Rwanda.

Cooling and health experts join forces for African sustainable vaccine network

Major African symposium brings together industry, academia, medical professionals and health agencies to drive progress in sustainable vaccine logistics.

UK Government commits to address the urgent lack of cold-chain in Africa

Developing countries will receive £4 million to reduce harmful emissions from outdated air conditioning units, cooling refrigeration and cold supply chains.

Rwanda and UK Governments join IFC to advance Africa cold chain progress

The Rwanda and UK governments joined forces at COP27 to help speed the delivery of innovative cooling technologies in Africa.

COP27- No time to waste 

BBC Future’s William Park talks to experts about the research & innovation that’s helping us tackle food waste, in a webinar from the Horticulture Quality and Food Loss Network. This webinar took place on 8 Novermber 2022 and was hosted by Cranfield University and BBSRC to accompany the COP27 climate conference.

UN Climate Change Conference 2022 (COP27)

Globally, heating and cooling contribute almost 40% of emissions from energy-related sources. Delivering clean heating and cooling in buildings and food chains can align climate policy with development goals. We will dive into these frontier challenges, exploring policy, technology and models needed

ACES advances Africa cold chain progress through international partnership

The African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain (ACES) has announced at COP 27 that it will work with global cold chain provider Carrier to help advance cooling development and training in Africa.

“Help us understand priority gaps where ACES can best be of service”
Brian Holuj, Strategic Delivery Lead for ACES on behalf of UNEP United for Efficiency (U4E), overviews the ACES Engagement Day hosted on Friday, 21 October for the GOGLA Forum attendees to further cold chain collaboration.

African sustainable cooling centre appoints General Manager
Morris Kayitare has been appointed General Manager for the African Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold chain (ACES).

‘I am thrilled to be appointed the General Manager. ACES brings together multi-disciplinary stakeholders and experts to develop and demonstrate ways of delivering affordable low carbon emissions cooling for agriculture and vaccines cold-chain systems necessary for Africa’s social-economic development.’
Morris Kayitare – General Manager ACES

Birmingham global cooling summit launches new partnership
‘Turning food loss and waste into nutritionally available food is critical for Africa’s sustainable development as well as building critical food reserves that are used to feed people in times of shocks.’
Rwandan High Commissioner, His Excellency Johnston Busingye

The local to global cold-chain summit
University of Birmingham –29th September 2022
More than 50 research, industry and government partners from programmes across the UK, EU and Africa are coming together to share their knowledge and discuss research and innovation needs and collaboration opportunities to operationalise sustainable, equitable and resilient cold-chains for food and health globally. The conference aims to encourage engaged discussions, we at the CSC are keen to make it an open-house event to bring together a wide cohort of experts, industry and academic partners. Click the link for the full schedule.

Africa’s Cold Rush and the Promise of Refrigeration
“For the developing world, refrigeration is growth. In Rwanda, it could spark an economic transformation.”
Nicola Twilley | The New Yorker

COP President Alok Sharma visits a unique Centre in Africa dedicated to supporting sustainable cooling
ACES is a demonstration of how we can work together, to help tackle rising emissions and keep alive the goal of limiting average global temperature rises.”
COP president Alok Sharma

Sustainable cooling experts gather in Washington for global food loss summit
The Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chain Summit will take place in the United States on 15 March to identify partnership and investment opportunities to scale up the impact of existing initiatives across Africa.

UK-India innovation centre kick-starts sustainable cooling journey
The Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain will conduct state-of-the-art applied research in food and vaccine distribution, supporting the roll-out of affordable, energy resilient, low emission cold-chain systems in India.

Africa’s sustainable cooling centre gets multi-million funding boost
The new Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold Chain (ACES) has taken a major step forward in Rwanda with a $3.5 (£2.4 million) million funding boost.

Global summit progresses refrigeration drive to support Africa’s farmers
Sustainable cooling experts from around the globe are taking part in a key virtual summit that will give Africa’s policy makers and business leaders the tools to help keep farmers’ produce fresh and get it to market quickly and efficiently – reducing food waste, boosting profits and creating jobs.