Cold Chain That Works for Smallholder Farms
SankofaFresh cuts post-harvest losses and raises farmer incomes by combining community-owned cold storage with an offline-first marketplace and AI sensor monitoring — equipping youth to run the future of African food supply chains.
30–50%
Post-harvest loss in Ghana
3 Pillars
Storage · Marketplace · AI
4 Founders
Ghanaian-built & led
The Problem
of fresh produce in Ghana is lost after harvest
The cost falls hardest on smallholder farmers — unstable earnings, wasted harvests, and fewer youth jobs in agribusiness. Five interconnected failures drive this crisis.
No nearby cold storage
Farmers are forced to sell immediately at rock-bottom prices with no ability to hold produce and wait for better market conditions.
Inconsistent supply & quality
Buyers face unpredictable supply and quality, driving up rejection rates, further increasing food waste throughout the chain.
Fragmented market information
Limited visibility into prices, buyers, and demand traps farmers in distress sales — selling low when they could sell high.
Unreliable electricity
Power instability makes traditional cold storage expensive and operationally risky, keeping costs out of reach for communities.
Existing solutions miss the point
Current apps address market information but ignore the physical problem: keeping produce fresh long enough to reach buyers.
* Twum-Dei B, et al. (2025) Study protocol: post-harvest losses of fruits and vegetables and their relationship with nutritional status. Front. Public Health.
Our Solution
One platform. Three integrated layers.
While existing solutions focus on only one part of the problem, SankofaFresh integrates storage, marketplace, logistics, and AI monitoring into a single community-run platform.
Pay-Per-Use Cold Storage Hubs
- Community-owned modular cold rooms near farming clusters
- Trained local operators for intake, grading, labeling & inventory
- Farmers book storage via a lightweight app or SMS
- No upfront cost — charged per kg stored
Offline-First Digital Marketplace
- Verified buyers place orders and choose pickup windows
- Batched logistics routes reduce transport cost and spoilage
- Works in low-connectivity rural areas via SMS fallback
- Transaction fee on every completed farmer-to-buyer order
AI Sensor Monitoring
- Tracks temperature, humidity, door activity & power interruptions
- SMS alerts trigger before spoilage threshold is reached
- Turns cold storage from passive space into an actively managed service
- Low-cost IoT sensors designed for community-scale deployment
Competitive Differentiator
Existing solutions fix market info or online trading — but none solve the physical cold chain gap. SankofaFresh is the only platform that does all four.
How It Works
From farm to buyer in four steps
A simple, repeatable operating model built for low-connectivity rural environments.
Book
SMS or app booking
Farmers book cold storage space via SMS or the lightweight app — no smartphone required. Confirmations are instant.
Store
Hub intake & grading
Trained local hub operators receive the produce, grade for quality, label batches, and log inventory into the system.
Match
Verified buyers place orders
Buyers browse available stock by crop, quality grade, and quantity. They place orders and select a pickup window.
Deliver
Batched pickup & payment
Orders are batched into efficient routes, reducing transport cost and spoilage. Payment is released upon successful pickup.
Impact
Built to measure what matters
Our pilot targets three interconnected outcomes that prove the model works before scaling.
30–50%
of produce lost without cold chain
Reduce Spoilage
Measurable reduction in post-harvest loss for pilot crops through temperature-controlled storage and AI-triggered alerts before spoilage.
Higher
average price vs. baseline farmgate sales
Raise Farmer Income
Farmers gain the ability to store produce and sell at the right time, capturing price uplifts vs. distress farmgate sales.
4 Roles
per hub: operator, grader, agent, logistics
Create Youth Jobs
Every hub employs local youth as operators, graders, field agents, and logistics coordinators — building agribusiness careers.
Key Pilot Metrics We're Tracking
Post-harvest loss reduction
Pilot target for tomatoes, peppers & leafy greens
Price uplift vs. baseline
Average improvement on farmgate distress sale price
Storage utilization rate
Target cold hub occupancy for unit economics viability
On-time pickup rate
Buyer fulfillment rate across batched logistics routes
The Team
Ghanaian-built and led
Four co-founders with complementary expertise across technology, engineering, supply chain, and community infrastructure.
Partnerships & Go-to-Market
Mantey Joshua Kojo Aduampong
Co-Founder & Team Lead
Proficiency in process optimization and data-driven supply chain modeling. Leads partnerships and commercial strategy.
AI, Data & Systems
Rosemary Agbozo
Co-Founder & Technology Lead
Expertise in AI, embedded systems, cybersecurity, and applied machine learning. Leads the sensor monitoring platform.
Our Ask
Help us launch the first community cold hub
We're seeking pilot funding, cold chain partnerships, and connections to buyer networks to launch our first community hub and prove the model. Whether you're a farmer, buyer, investor, or partner — we want to hear from you.