East African Postharvest Technology Fair

8 – 9 May 2017. Boot-camp Accelerated Training for the Top 25. This involved capacity building to the Top 25 innovators and preparations to pitch to relevant stakeholders during the Fair.

10 May 2017. Nairobi. The East Africa Postharvest Technologies Fair (EAPTF-2017) provided a unique platform for Top 25 East Africa innovators to showcase their solutions to postharvest handling challenges namely: shelling, drying, storage, transport and logistics and Information and Communication Technology.

The Fair followed the successful Postharvest Technologies Competition in Arusha in April 3-7, 2017 that involved Top 38 innovators from the region (EAPTC2017). The EAPTF-2017 featured high level key-note panel discussion; pitching sessions by the Top 25 innovators; Business to Business (B2B and
B2C) meetings, exhibitions and gala dinner. The Top 3 innovators won seed fund amounting to USD 30,000.

Key participants in the Fair included farmer groups and cooperatives representatives, regional

organizations, government officials from relevant ministries, development partners, investors and financiers.

The EAPTF-2017 was organized by the Inter Region Economic Network in conjunction with its partners-USAID supported East Africa Trade Investment Hub and Syngenta. The EAPTF-2017 is the climax of a journey started in 2016 to identify postharvest innovations and technologies that demonstrate the ability to offer practical solutions to postharvest food loss and waste and show potential for scale-up and wider dissemination.

Related: Low cost device helps Kenyan farmers reduce waste
Read more at: Coolbolt is an electronic gadget that overrides the air-conditioning’s (AC) temperature gauge, tricking it into working harder and hence serving two purposes at the same time by cooling the air below the set point. This makes it possible for the temperatures to drop to as low as zero degrees without ice building up on the evaporator coils of the AC. The university’s post-harvest expert, Dr Jane Ambuko, says that the gadget’s installation effectively converts a room fitted with AC into a cold room.

This device is like a thermostat. It has a heater and a sensor so if fitted to an AC, it can lower the temperature down to zero degrees. In normal circumstances, an AC without the cool bolt can only lower room temperature up to 18 degrees Celsius or else ice builds up on the coils,” she says. She says the Coolbolt device is cheaper than conventional cold rooms because it goes for between Sh63,750 and Sh340,000 while a conventional cold room costs approximately Sh850,000.
Read more at: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000139795/low-cost-device-helps-kenyan-farmers-reduce-waste