Sustainable refrigerators accessible to all (QOTTO )

Almost 25 million people in Benin and Burkina Faso have no access to electricity. In rural parts, 80 to 90% of people have no refrigerator.

The project aims to provide people living in remote areas with sustainable and affordable refrigerators powered by a self-contained solar kit. Developed by the company Qotto, this system has two advantages: the refrigerators use a “natural” refriger-ant, and keep their contents cool even without an electrical grid. Qotto aims to distribute several thousand refrigerators across Benin, then roll out the solution throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

The project has 3 goals:

• Developing a domestic solar cooling solution.
• Rolling-out the solution on a major scale in Benin.
• Validating the technical-economic model ahead of large-scale roll-out in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Making solar energy financially accessible for people living in rural areas.
• Increasing income for small local enterprises and traders by allowing them to stock perishable foodstuffs and so broaden what they can offer.
• Improving the health and quality of life of vulnerable populations cut-off from the electrical grid.

The solar kit developed by Qotto is specifically designed to power a refrigerator, minimising environmental impact and at an affordable cost. The “pay-as-you-go” model chosen by the company, where payment is linked to consumption, enables the most vulnerable families to acquire a solar kit that they would otherwise be unable to purchase themselves. Qotto is additionally rolling-out an “IoT platform”, intended to harvest precise data on consumption and generation levels at installed sites. The cooling used and the suitability of the proposed technical solution for different contexts and situations can thus be tracked and analysed. This data is vital to fine-tune the solution and prepare it to be upscaled across all sub-Saharan Africa.