Global LEAP Off-Grid Refrigerator Competition (Round 1) Follow-up Review

Refrigeration improves health, income generation and reduces the burden that typically falls on women to shop for, gather and prepare food

Abstract

Refrigeration improves health, income generation and reduces the burden that typically falls on women to shop for, gather and prepare food. In off-grid, rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, availability of off-grid refrigerators is poor and relies on the uptake of solar home systems. For the global market of off-grid refrigerators to develop, more energy efficient and cost-effective appliances are needed, but refrigerators are one of the most challenging off-grid appliances to design and develop.

The 2016-17 Competition (Round 1) aimed to transform the global market for off-grid refrigerators by incentivising companies to nominate appliances to be tested in laboratory and field settings, and then to be benchmarked against one other.

This follow-up review builds on the findings of the evaluation conducted by the innovation foundation Nesta (which can be accessed here) to assess what happened next to the finalists and winners of Round 1 of the competition, if and how the competition changed the market, and how the learning from Round 1 influenced the design of Round 2 and that of the Off-Grid Cold-Chain Challenge, another prize run by Global LEAP, funded through the Ideas to Impact programme.

Citation

Cheryl Brown (2020) 2016-17 Global LEAP Off-Grid Refrigerator Competition (Round 1) Follow-up Review. Ideas to Impact

Global LEAP Off-Grid Refrigerator Competition follow up review

Updates to this page

Published 31 March 2020