Youth-led company empowers fish mongers in Coast

Purity Gakuo, a young briliant and outgoing lady aged 25 is to say the least, a pace setter. Unlike majority of her peers who await formal employment, Purity founded

Kuza Freezer.

Kuza Freezer is a youth-led company in Mombasa with a mission to empower small-scale fishers and fish farmers especially those in off-grid fishing through affordable solar refrigeration to carb post-harvest losses.

In a news Interview with the Times Digital, Purity alluded:

“We manufacture and distribute low-cost solar powered freezers and offer them on a sustainable pay as you go model for small-scale fishers. We are also able to monitor and control our products remotely hence improving service quality.”

We sought to know what inspired her to co-found Kuza Freezer

“Having interacted with small-scale fishers for over 5 years, I was able to understand their cold-chain pain point in their day to day fishing activities. I came up with the Kuza Freezer idea but I needed a co-founder with the technical expertise. Dennis has a good technical background with also a great knowledge on renewable energy. This is why I partnered with him.

Purity shares with us the economic significance that the invention brought.

“Our solution has enabled the small-scale fishers to not only avoid post-harvest losses but also in increasing their daily revenue by at least 50% increase. This is because they no longer have to sell their fish harvest at throw away prices. Our solution also eliminates the need of ice to preserve hence saving them at least $2 ice cost daily.”

The Scope of her business entails

“Our business scope is researching, designing, developing, manufacturing and selling pay as you go solar-powered freezers.

So far we have reached over 150 small-scale fishers in Kenya using our solar freezers to preserve their fish harvest with 60% being women fish farmers and fish vendors.”

Our vision 2030 goal is to see Kuza Freezer become a full fledged solar freezer manufacturing firm in Kenya and promote the government’s big four, manufacturing agenda. Through this, we will also be able to create more jobs for our fellow youths.

Our urge to the government is to support and realize our big vision through business linkages and networks to potential partners especially in the manufacturing sector to enable us to scale our manufacturing.

Kuza Freezer has the potential to scale and improve the livelihoods of millions of small-scale fishers in Kenya and Africa at large.

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