Building Africa’s Resilience through Cold-Chain Training for Global Health

The international Cool World: Sustainable Cold-Chain for the Global South conference being held at the University of Birmingham on 28th – 29th October this year (2025) aims to foster the collaborative thinking and action to rapidly deliver holistic, affordable, sustainable, and resilient cooling and cold-chain (and other energy services through integration) to all, as well as identify supporting research, trade and commercial opportunities.

ACES’ One Health team - Jean Pierre Musabyimana, Hugor Shema and Ariane Mutabaruk - explore "Building Africa’s Resilience through Cold-Chain Training for Global Health"; one of the plenary topics to be covered at the conference.

In recent years, the global health landscape has undergone significant changes, characterised by emerging pathogens, rising climate volatility, and the ongoing need for equitable access to vaccines and diagnostics. However, a fundamental component of this system often remains neglected and underdeveloped in many parts of Africa: the cold-chain.

The cold-chain, the temperature-controlled supply system essential for transporting and storing vaccines, medicines, diagnostic reagents, and perishable foods, serves as the silent backbone of global health. Its failure, whether due to poor infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, or a lack of trained personnel, can mean the difference between life and death. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this reality became painfully evident. Some vaccines lost potency due to inconsistent storage conditions; others were unable to reach remote communities in time due to a lack of adequate cold-chain infrastructure. In Africa, it is estimated that up to 50% of vaccines are wasted due to cold-chain failures, resulting in significant financial losses and missed immunisation opportunities. Of these, an estimated 25% or more of vaccine doses are compromised by failures in cold-chain custody, such as freezing or excess heat exposure^{1, 2.}

Why Cold-Chain Training Is Critical

Despite its importance, the cold-chain remains one of the least understood and most undervalued components of health systems in Africa. Most public health training programmes offer little or no content on refrigeration, thermal monitoring, or energy resilience. Technicians and logisticians are often expected to "figure it out" on the job, leading to inefficiencies, wastage, and sometimes tragic outcomes.³

In response, the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES), in partnership with other academic institutions, is taking a bold step: launching a Cold-Chain for Global Health training programme. This programme is designed not merely as a course, but as a capacity-building movement, to train African practitioners, engineers, logisticians, and public health leaders in designing, maintaining, managing, and innovating cold-chain systems tailored to African realities and Rwanda in particular.

What the Training Covers

This cross-cutting, hands-on, interdisciplinary programme has been designed to integrate key areas across public health, biomedical engineering, logistics, data science, and climate adaptation. Topics covered include:

• Temperature monitoring and diagnostics across the supply chain.
• Energy-resilient refrigeration systems, including solar-powered units.
• Vaccine cold-chain planning for urban and remote delivery.
• Food safety and nutrition cold-chains for maternal and child health.
• Data-driven cold-chain optimisation, using tools like IoT and real-time sensors.
• Policy, regulation, and compliance for national and cross-border supply systems.

Delivered in a blended format - online theory combined with hands-on fieldwork - the programme is tailored for Rwanda and the greater East African region, with a view to expanding into other regions across the continent as ACES’ training resources grow.

Born in Rwanda … Pan-Africa in Vision

Rwanda offers a uniquely fertile environment for such innovation. With its strong health infrastructure, political commitment to digital transformation, and strategic geographic location, the country serves as a “laboratory” for scalable cold-chain solutions. Rwanda’s investments in drone delivery, national data systems, and universal health coverage demonstrates a readiness to adopt and lead in this vital sector. For example, partnerships with Zipline have enabled drone deliveries of vaccines with a 96% on-time success rate, reducing wastage and improving access⁴.

But the vision goes beyond Rwanda. Africa faces recurring outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, fragile food systems, and chronic underinvestment in health infrastructure. With the African cold-chain logistics market valued at around $10.88 billion in 2025 and projected to grow, there is immense potential amid challenges such as food insecurity potentially affecting millions.⁵ By scaling cold-chain training across the continent, we can:

• Drastically reduce vaccine wastage and stockouts.
• Improve nutritional outcomes by ensuring the integrity of perishable foods.
• Support local biotech and diagnostics industries that rely on cold storage.
• Create green jobs in sustainable refrigeration and maintenance.
• Increase health system resilience in the face of climate extremes.

The Call to Action – Rethinking Cold-Chain for Global Health through the One Health Lens

Africa doesn't just need more cold boxes. It needs local innovators, technicians, and decision-makers who understand how to build and maintain fully integrated cold-chain systems tailored to our diverse environments, from the Sahel to the Congo Basin. It needs systems that are not only robust and reliable, but also resilient in the face of climate change, ecological disruption, and the growing interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health.

The Cold-Chain for Global Health programme is a starting point, an investment in people, in systems, and long-term sustainability. It equips practitioners across sectors with the skills and vision to design cold-chains that serve vaccination programmes, disease surveillance, veterinary services, nutrition efforts, and diagnostic infrastructure alike. This is what One Health looks like in action.

We invite public health agencies, donors, private sector partners, and regional institutions to join us. Together, we can ensure that temperature-sensitive health products reach every village, every health centre, every time, because in global health, and across human, animal, and environmental well-being, cold can save lives.

You can sign up for our next course here.