Your VCCA’s Smart Cool Markets Launched in Nigeria

Your VCCA visits Nigeria

On our latest visit to Nigeria, the Your VCCA team sat down with farmers and traders across bustling marketplaces to better understand the everyday realities of selling produce in person. Our time with one young trader, Musa, highlighted these experiences while framing opportunities for the future.

Musa and his brother have a stand in the Mile 12 Market in Lagos, where they primarily sell Efo Igbo (African Eggplant Leaf) and Ewedu (Jute Leaf), among other commodities. Two years ago, Musa began using the local Coldhubs solar-powered cold room at Mile 12 to reduce spoilage of his produce.

Now, each Wednesday, Musa brings his produce to the cold room in bulk. After each day’s sales, he stores his remaining produce in the cold room. This cycle of selling, storing, and returning to market typically lasts about one week, by which time he has sold through his entire stock and is ready to make his next bulk purchase. Since adopting this approach, Musa has noticed a significant improvement in the quality and shelf life of his produce, enabling him to sell fresher goods for a longer period. However, users like Musa spend much of their day at their market stalls, selling produce in small quantities. This limits them to only selling to customers who visit the market, preventing Musa from finding buyers more strategically.

But Musa is not without options. As a tech-savvy young man with a smartphone, he regularly shops on platforms like Jumia and Konga—Africa-focused e-commerce sites, similar to Amazon. During our conversation, we posed a simple but powerful question: What if you could sell your produce the same way? What if customers could buy your crops with just a few taps on their phones? Musa’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. The idea clearly resonated, offering a glimpse into how digital tools could transform the way young traders like him do business.

So far, physical marketplaces have posed specific challenges for farmers and consumers alike, which online marketplaces could help overcome by serving as a complementary channel. Farmers often face distress selling due to the rapid degradation of fresh produce, while consumers express concerns about unhygienic storage conditions. At the same time, poor market linkages prevent both parties from coordinating timely, bulk transactions—limiting efficiency and profitability across the board.

In response to these challenges, the Your VCCA team is excited to introduce Smart Cool Markets, the latest feature of the Coldtivate App, available under the ‘Marketplace’ section on the app screen. This innovation reimagines cold storage not merely as a preservation tool but as an aggregation center, serving as a direct link between cooling users and buyers. The marketplace offers promising opportunities for smallholders and small-scale vendors in economically vulnerable situations to access more reliable and timely income, something that traditional physical markets often struggle to provide.

When used effectively, cold storage can strengthen market linkages, streamline food distribution, boost profitability, and deliver value to every actor across the agricultural value chain.

What is ‘Smart Cool Markets’?

This idea for Smart Cool Markets emerged from repeated insights gathered during field visits and conversations with farmers across Asia and Africa. One recurring question stood out:

“Why should I pay to cool my produce if it doesn’t guarantee a sale, even if it helps slow down spoilage?”

It was a fair and pressing question—one that demanded a fair and innovative answer. Thus was born the idea of the Smart Cool Markets, a new feature that transforms cold storage from a preservation service into a dynamic sales platform.

In 2024, the Your VCCA project received funding from REPIC, an interdepartmental platform supported by the Swiss federal offices SECO, SDC, FOEN, and SFOE, to integrate a digital marketplace into the Coldtivate app.

Now, farmers can list their crops for sale immediately upon bringing them to the cold room, setting their preferred price per kilogram. These listings appear on Coldtivate, where consumers can view available quantities, see real-time prices, and make purchases—just like any e-commerce platform. Where partnerships exist between the cooling company and local delivery providers, produce can be delivered straight to the buyer’s doorstep.

But what truly sets Coldtivate Market Place apart from any other online marketplace for fresh fruits and vegetables?

The app uses environmental sensor data from the cold rooms, along with harvest dates and details about the produce provided by the farmers. It combines this information with scientific models of how each type of produce behaves to calculate and show how much shelf life is left for each product. Importantly, upon purchase completion, payments go directly to the farmers, eliminating both intermediaries and the transportation costs typically incurred when traveling to and from the market.

This model does not just benefit farmers; it supports cooling companies too. By increasing the usage and utility of their cold rooms, companies generate more consistent revenue, making it easier to maintain their facilities and serve the community.

Recognising that technology can still be intimidating for many farmers, the Smart Cool Markets model does not require them to own or operate a smartphone to participate. Instead, trained cold room operators, skilled in both cold storage management and farmer engagement, handle the listing of crops directly through the Coldtivate app on their behalf, ensuring inclusive and equitable access to the marketplace’s benefits.Furthermore, the app is available in Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba to make it accessible to the local population.

As the Coldtivate Smart Cool Markets continues to grow, cooling companies can also onboard bulk buyers such as retailers and hotels. These buyers can place large orders, which can either be fulfilled by a single farmer or through aggregation across multiple farmers and cold rooms.

To support this, the app allows cooling companies to purchase and aggregate crops from farmers for onward sales. How is this different from traditional middlemen?

Crucially, any revenue from forward sales is reinvested into the operation and maintenance of the cold rooms—keeping them functional and accessible. Farmers, in turn, receive fair market prices—rather than being subjected to lowballing practices aimed at maximising intermediary profits.

Today, the entire Smart Cool Markets system operates with digital payment options, making it accessible and adaptable for a range of users.

Training and Capacity Bridging

Thoughtful technical design and development alone are not sufficient to successfully deploy Smart Cool Markets; ensuring all stakeholders receive appropriate training is key for proper use of Coldtivate’s full capabilities. Currently, training is being designed and provided across three target user groups: cold room operators, smallholder farmers, and prospective customers.

To ensure cold room operators can navigate the app with ease on a day-to-day basis, they are receiving thorough technical training across all aspects of the Coldtivate app. This is crucial as operators are not only responsible for managing current storage operations, but also supporting smallholder farmers (especially those without smartphones) to sell their produce through Smart Cool Markets. Our on-ground Training Leads manage these activities by providing in-person, one-on-one training, with virtual follow up sessions arranged as needed. Additionally, all cold room operators are integrated into an online technical support group, alongside our dedicated technical team. This platform enables continuous, community-based assistance, where questions can be raised and addressed collaboratively, fostering ongoing learning and problem-solving.

In contrast, smallholder farmers are trained and supported through a community-focused approach from the outset. Community-wide workshops have taken place across a range of cold rooms in Nigeria, introducing Smart Cool Markets as more than just a new feature on Coldtivate but as a new way to sell produce. During these sessions, emphasis is placed on the convenience of selling produce directly through the cold room — providing farmers the opportunity to reach more consumers and generate higher profits with less effort.

To date, over 300 farmers have participated in these trainings, 33 percent of whom are women. More than 80 percent of the participants have expressed interest in using Smart Cool Markets Building on this momentum, we are also introducing a Cold Room Champion Program. Champions are defined as farmers who:

• consistently use the cold room over time,
• store significant quantities of produce,
• have experienced tangible profit improvements, and
• show curiosity about using Smart Cool Markets.

These champions serve as trusted peer educators, offering firsthand testimonials and sparking enthusiasm in the pilot.

While farmer adoption is key, the success of the pilot also depends on strong and sustained demand from consumers. With respect to prospective buyers, we have identified two distinct customer groups: bulk buyers and individual consumers. Personalised and distinct outreach is necessary to reach each customer group effectively. In this effort, we are currently conducting needs assessments and analyses to gain a deeper understanding of these customer personas. As a result of previous workshop efforts, our pilot partners have also identified and built relationships with several aggregators and local businesses.

Future of Smart Cool Markets

While agricultural cooling presents a powerful solution for reducing post-harvest losses, its long-term viability still depends on grants and subsidies. This is largely because cold room fees are intentionally kept low to ensure accessibility for smallholder farmers. However, many cold rooms still operate below optimal capacity, often with occupancy rates under 50 percent, because farmers are hesitant to invest in cooling without a clear path to market.

Smart Cool Markets addresses this challenge by creating an end-to-end, farmer-to-consumer model that not only drives consistent revenue but also supports the sustainability of cold storage infrastructure. By streamlining sales directly through the cold room, the platform ensures cooling becomes a seamless part of post-harvest behavior—affordable, accessible, and directly linked to improved profitability.

As of June 2025, the marketplace feature has been launched exclusively in Nigeria. However, the underlying framework was designed with scalability in mind, allowing for replication in other countries with the support of additional funding for localisation. This includes integration with diverse digital payment systems and customisation of farmer-to-buyer sales models to suit different agricultural markets.

Given the high anticipation surrounding this feature, Your VCCA is now looking to expand the marketplace into new markets and enhance its functionality by integrating refrigerated delivery options in partnership with cold storage providers. This upgrade would enable fresh produce to reach a broader customer base while preserving its quality. The Coldtivate app is already equipped to support this advancement, using sensors to continuously monitor shelf life as produce moves between cold rooms or through sensor-enabled refrigerated trucks—ensuring consistent freshness, quality, and transparency across the supply chain.

Fresh crops at Your Fingertips!

Embracing a smarter and more sustainable food system is now more accessible than ever for farmers, buyers, and cold room operators alike. Smart Cool Markets offers an efficient conduit for the direct sale and purchase of premium, fresh produce directly from cold storage. The platform delivers substantial benefits to all stakeholders, evidenced by its streamlined onboarding, dedicated assistance, and demonstrable economic advantages. By engaging with this system, participants not only optimise their own operations but also play a crucial role in bolstering local economies, minimising food waste, and advancing food security.