News – Blog
25 November 2019
The competition sought to stimulate the off-grid refrigeration market in developing countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Refrigeration is seen as a way to to unlock social and economic progress for billions of un- and under-electrified people, as it can prolong the nutritional value of food, reduce spoilage and waste, diversify diets enable income generating-activities and reduce time spent shopping and/or gathering food.
This competition was seen to be the first step in generating new technologies that outperformed market standards in efficiency, value and user appeal; and recognising the best in-class off-grid refrigeration technologies.
In December 2018, Challenge Works (then Nesta’s Challenge Prize Centre) finalised an independent evaluation for the Global LEAP Off-Grid Refrigerator Competition. The evaluation combined a mixed methods approach in investigating quantitative and qualitative outcomes allowing us to engage with all the relevant stakeholders involved in the competition including innovators, partners, judges, other market players and end-users (local business owners). Given there was a high degree of technicality involved in the production of these off-grid refrigerators, this allowed us to measure the solutions effectiveness and efficiency. While understanding innovators and end-users experiences provided us with rich and meaningful narratives on the power of open innovation competitions and off-grid refrigerators.
The competition sought to incentivise technical innovation, support innovators and influence the broader ecosystem about the value of off-grid appropriate refrigeration devices and solar home systems. In order to measure, the Challenge Works approach was categorised into three impact categories:
The main outcomes from the competition were centred around technical innovation, user feedback and value of off-grid appliances and solar home systems:
Though the competition was able to incentivise technical and market innovation in off-grid refrigerators, there was still an issue on ensuring they were affordable and accessible to local businesses, communities and households. The cost of developing these off-grid refrigerators were still quite high and as a result the price point at which they were available to sell in East African markets were high.
There were significant learnings from the competition on how to create an open innovation challenge that yields innovation, develops capacity of innovators and build.
The competition cannot yet claim to have created a robust off-grid refrigerator market across East Africa, but it has shaped the market by creating formally established tests and benchmarks to guide future activities in the sector.
As a result of this competition pushing technical innovation in off-grid refrigerators, Global LEAP launched the second version of this competition in November 2018 to further push the boundaries of producing innovative solutions that are cost-effective, accessible and affordable to end-users. The competition announced its winners and finalists in September 2019.
Written by Bhavik Doshi, Research and Impact Officer, Challenge Works
The Global LEAP Off-Grid Refrigerator Competition was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Scaling Off-Grid Energy: A Challenge for Development (SOGE) and Power Africa, U.S. Department of Energy(DoE) and UKAID/DFID (Department for International Development); implemented by CLASP.
Energy 4 Impact (E4I), DAI and IMC/Ideas2Impact (I2I); and evaluated by Challenge Works.
