Practical tools ยท free to communities

Practical tools for a net-zero cold economy.

From a community cold chain’s readiness to its finance, and a national planner that prices both the money and the public value, and designs the harms out before they’re built in.

Explore the tools →
The toolkit

Seven toolsets, one connected method.

It starts with the evidence: a needs assessment measures what a community grows, loses and would pay for, so the models run on real numbers rather than defaults. Two builder pillars then get projects investment-ready: the hub toolkit takes a community cold chain from readiness to finance, and value addition builds on the cold chain, where most of food’s value is made, from grading and packaging to fresh-cut produce, dairy and chilled products, for an entrepreneur or a community, standalone or inside a hub. The Marketplace is the shared spine both feed into, matching readiness-graded projects to funders and monitoring them live. Around them, the Accelerator plans and prices the system at every scale, the EV toolset plans the clean-transport transition, and accreditation validates and certifies facilities in operation. Self-contained toolsets that share crops, currency, evidence and appraisals where the data connects.

How it fits together →

Needs assessment

Understand the need first

Field instruments for a community baseline and the national interviews around it: what is grown, what is lost and where, and what people would pay. The step that turns the tools’ illustrative defaults into your own measured numbers.

Open the needs assessment →
Community cooling hubs

From readiness to finance

Assess readiness, size and model the hub, build an investor-grade case, and connect communities to capital through the Marketplace.

Open the hub toolkit →
Cold-Chain Accelerator

Plan the system, then test it

Explore the national case, plan the whole government system, then test it: how fast the workforce it needs can be trained, and what the plan can least afford to leave out: through a government, donor or financier lens. Full triple-bottom-line ROI throughout.

Open the Accelerator →
Electric vehicles

Plan the transition

The case for change, charging and infrastructure, total cost of ownership and operations, with an AI assistant to guide you.

Open the EV microsite →
Value addition & processing

Add Value

Best-use and value calculators, a business-model builder and a readiness evaluator to build a cold-chain value-addition business, grading, packaging, fresh-cut produce, dairy, chilled and frozen products. Around three-quarters of food’s value is created after the farm gate; capture it, as an entrepreneur or SME, or a community inside a Cooling Hub.

Open the value-addition tools →
Marketplace & monitoring

Where projects meet capital

The shared spine both builder pillars feed into: readiness-graded cooling hubs and value-addition ventures are matched anonymously to the right funders, then monitored live against baseline. Free to communities; funders join by membership.

Open the Marketplace →
Accreditation & assurance

Validate & certify an operating hub

The validation toolset: audit a running facility on evidence across the five readiness pillars (CHRL, Community Hub Readiness Level), grade it Basic to Advanced, and certify it for finance, market and export.

About accreditation →
Why it matters

Cooling without consequences.

Across sub-Saharan Africa about 37% of food is lost between farm and fork, and up to half of all vaccines are wasted to temperature. Built well, the cold chain is critical infrastructure; built badly, it brings its own harms. The tools above design those harms out, from a hub’s readiness and finance, through the value it adds by processing, to its operation and certification.

37%
of food lost farm-to-fork in sub-Saharan Africa
$1tn
Africa’s food market by 2030: needs a cold chain
370m
people without access to cooling today
One toolkit, connected

Start anywhere: the tools link as you go.

The Community Cooling Hub simulator draws on the EV total-cost-of-ownership work for electric collection vehicles; the value-addition tools feed processed-product revenue and cold-storage needs straight into the hub business case; and the Cold-Chain Accelerator shares crops, currency and appraisals with the hub tools. Validated, readiness-graded hubs and value-addition ventures meet funders in the Marketplace, and are monitored there against baseline.