ACES Capacity Building & Training Farmers GESI Policymakers Refrigeration Technician Training

We have trained 2,000+ across Africa and are setting course to double capacity during 2026

An overview of our training progress by Professor Toby Peters

In the last four months alone, more than 350 trainees have completed courses at ACES, with approximately 40% being women.

We are very pleased to announce major progress in our mission to build the skills base Africa needs to deliver sustainable, resilient, cooling and cold-chain infrastructure vital for food security and better health outcomes. Having provided hands-on training to more than 2,000 farmers, technicians, and policymakers, we are now preparing for a significant scale-up of provision. With new courses launching in January, including apprenticeship pathways, night school for the informal sector, micro-credit routes, and expanded online learning, we are on track to more than double its annual training capacity by 2026.

This investment in skills comes at a critical moment. Across Africa, 30–50% of perishable food produce is still lost post-harvest due to inadequate cooling, while health systems do not have the reliable cold-chains required to maintain vaccines, blood, and essential medicines at safe temperatures. Addressing these gaps requires far more than refrigeration equipment; it demands people able to design, operate, and maintain efficient, equitable and inclusive resilient cold-chain systems based on low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants, clean energy, and effective data-driven management.

Building the Skills Base for Africa’s Cold-Chains

Our training programmes, delivered through the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) and regional partners, provides a structured pathway for students to progress from foundational skills to advanced, accredited qualifications, such as an MSc in Clean Cooling, or alternatively to join the learning journey at the most appropriate entry point for them. Short modular courses offer stackable micro-credentials, enabling informal workers to convert practice-based learning into formal qualifications over time.

Across Africa, ACES training cohorts now include farmers, refrigeration technicians, agribusiness managers, aquaculture specialists, post-harvest trainers, health logisticians, and policy officers, demonstrating the breadth of the skills based needed to build the continent’s cold-chain sector. In the last four months alone, more than 350 trainees have completed courses at ACES, with approximately 40% women, reflecting a strong commitment to Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI).

Skills are the backbone of a functioning cold-chain. By inclusively equipping farmers, technicians, and policy-makers from a wide range of backgrounds with relevant evidence-based training and accredited competencies, we are building the base for resilient systems that cut food loss, protect public health, and create economic opportunity.

Refrigeration Training: From Fundamentals to Mastering Fault Diagnostics

At the ACES Refrigeration Training Centre in Kigali, trainees receive practical instruction on a wide range of technical topics, including:

Installation and maintenance of energy-efficient systems.
Safe handling of natural refrigerants (R290, R600a).
Fault diagnosis using the ‘faults on purpose’ method.

The course methodology and state-of-the-art facilities importantly exposes students to system faults (for example, condensing issues, under-charging of refrigerants, blocked expansion devices), enabling them to learn how to diagnose issues that, in real life, might take years of field experience to encounter. This leapfrog approach accelerates competence, raises safety standards, and reduces emissions from avoidable system failures.

Field trips are also a key practical learning feature of CCN’s programmes, as illustrated by the fourth Foundation Course recently held in Nairobi, Kenya. The latter brought together engineers, farmers, quality controllers, and aquaculture practitioners over five intensive days, during which they not only covered classroom based topics such as refrigerants, system efficiency, environmental impacts, post-harvest handling, regulatory frameworks, and sustainable business models, but also undertook visits to solar-powered aggregation hubs and packhouses to see theory in practice.

Train-the-Trainer for Accelerated Knowledge Transfer

Africa urgently needs a rapid scale-up of the knowledge and skills necessary to support the uptake of sustainable cooling and cold-chains. In response to this challenge we have developed a novel Train-the-Trainer offering which is creating a cascade effect for accelerated dissemination across the continent. Collaboratively developed by our academic partnership and recently accredited by the Institution of Agricultural Engineers (IAgrE), the programme embeds engineering, logistics, gender inclusion, data systems, and financeable business planning, amongst other topics. Students will be able to obtain an internationally recognised PGCert qualification, Train the Trainer – Clean Cooling.

Online Learning Expands Access Across Africa

To broaden access, we launched the first Clean Cooling Online Academy course, Essentials in Cold-Chain Systems, on 1 September 2025. This mobile-friendly, six-hour, self-paced course covers:

Thermodynamics and product temperature needs
Uninterrupted cold-chain architecture
Business models and operations
Climate impacts and low-carbon design

Importantly, it is specifically designed for low-bandwidth environments, opening engagement pathways for those who want to learn but are unable to travel for in-person training.

Additional online courses will be released in early 2026, positioning our Academy as a leading platform for remote learning and continuous professional development (CPD) in clean cooling.

2026 Expansion: Apprenticeships and Doubling Capacity

From January 2026, we will introduce apprenticeship programmes combining formal instruction with supervised industry placement. This vital component of the training mix will integrate:

Refrigeration and cold storage engineering
Telematics and data logging
Climate science and environmental performance
Community cooling hub operations
Health cold-chain systems
Sustainable business model development

With these additions to its ongoing provision, we project that training output will more than double by 2026, strengthening national capacity in Rwanda, Kenya, and an expanding portfolio of partner countries.

Get Involved

Are you seeking new challenges and looking to learn skills rare in the market? Do you want to undergo a unique, flexible, learner-centred CCN learning journey? Visit our Academy to learn more about ACES training programmes and join the CCN community today for the latest news, events and discussions around cooling and cold-chain.