Vienna, May 6th, 2022 – Africa’s future is depending also on refrigeration: in a continent where food waste exceeds 70% due to the difficulties with adequate storage and transportation, and where it is often impossible to deliver medicines and vaccines because of lacking infrastructure, refrigeration can be the key to an unprecedented breakthrough.
The appointment was set in Austria, at UNIDO’s headquarters in the Vienna International Centre, where Marco Buoni (Centro Studi Galileo CEO and AREA President) and Madi Sakandé (Centro Studi Galileo Expert Trainer and U-3ARC President) met Ole Nielsen (Chief of Montreal Protocol Division, Environment Department) alongside the concerning Industrial Development Officers. During this meeting Buoni and Sakandé presented the current situation with its challenges, highlighting that the key to ensuring an efficient cold chain in Africa is training; in particular, a new methodology is needed for African countries.
To begin with, it will be necessary to guarantee the supply of adequate equipment: inspections will be needed for this purpose and, at the same time, a continuous and strong relationship with the local experts will help building comprehensive curricula that will support the training of a new generation of qualified technicians, ready to face the current technological transition.
The main goal is long-term sustainability of the countries that, after the initial support, will be able to proceed autonomously; in order to do so, the regulatory framework will have to be taken care of as well.
“We would like to identify three players each time“, said Madi Sakandé: “The national support system, i.e. the government and/or the NOU’s; the international support systems, i.e. UNIDO; the international observers, i.e. AREA and U-3ARC.”
The ultimate aim is to implement the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol as much as possible, in particular by making sure that the African RAC Sector starts adopting natural and alternative refrigerants from the very beginning, which marks even more the necessity of training due to the technical features of these gases.
This topic will also be dealt with on May 21st during a free webinar, delivered by U-3ARC and AREA for the benefit of African Technicians; the event will take place in English and will be simultaneously translated in French, Portuguese, and Arabic, being coordinated and promoted by Centro Studi Galileo, the renowned European RACHP training centre.
