- The 7th Start Up Energy Transition Award (SET Award) recognises 11 climate innovations from Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia.
- This global ranking initiated in 2017 is co-organised by the German federal government.
The energy transition’s technology has been the focus of the Start-Up Energy Transition Award (SET Award), which recently published its list of the Top 100 breakthroughs in electric transportation, smart agriculture, the circular economy, CO2 sequestration, and smart buildings. Eleven African start-ups’ solutions in total received awards.
Among them are the Kenyan business BasiGo, which specializes in clean cooking solutions and locally assembles electric buses to improve public transportation. The business founded by Kenyan Peter Njeri converts waste from Nairobi into biogas to provide underprivileged homes with alternatives to charcoal and wood for cooking, whose combustion causes air pollution.
There is also the Coldbox Store developed by the eponymous start-up based in Enugu State, Nigeria. This off-grid cold storage solution facilitates the preservation of food products to combat food waste at a time when 25 million people in Africa’s largest economy are at risk of hunger, according to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The smart meters from Standard Microgrid Zambia, a system that optimizes energy use for individuals in the Zambian capital Lusaka, are among other African climate advancements in the SET Awards 2023 global list. With the German Energy Agency, the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy supports the event (DENA). The jury for this seventh edition included people like Christoph Wolff, director of development at the European Climate Fund (ECF), and Jane Wu, executive director of the Venture Cup China investment fund.