Koolboks raises $11m for solar fridge assembly plant in Africa, founder shares lessons in patient capital

The African sun is both a blessing and a burden. It nourishes harvests but mercilessly robs them of shelf life. In many towns and villages, the simple act of keeping food fresh is a daily struggle, undone by the absence of electricity and cold storage.

This is the burden Koolboks has set out to ease. Born of two worlds—Nigeria and France—and the vision of Ayoola Dominic and Deborah Gaël, the cleantech startup is making affordable cold storage accessible to businesses across Africa.

Koolboks announced it has secured $11 million in Series A funding, blending equity, debt, and grants to fuel its mission and lay the foundation for its first assembly plant in Nigeria.

The round was led by KawiSafi Ventures, Aruwa Capital, and All On, with additional debt financing from FFEM and bpifrance. The startup also received grant support from a wide range of partners, including FFEM/AFD, PREO (co-funded by UK Aid and the IKEA Foundation), Efficiency for Access, Innovate UK, BGFA Uganda, CEI Africa, and the Shell Foundation.

This isn’t Koolboks’ first big step. Back in 2022, the startup secured $3.5 million. Since then, co-founder Ayoola told Business Insider Africa, the company has raised a total of about $18 million to power its vision.

Koolboks began in Paris in 2018, almost playfully, as a concept for a camping refrigerator for Europeans chasing weekends outdoors.

But by 2020, Ayoola Dominic and Deborah Gaël had turned their gaze to Africa’s informal economy, where the stakes were higher and the need was sharper.

They recognised a much larger market where small businesses depend on refrigeration for survival and not leisure.

They reimagined the refrigerator, a solar-powered box with an internal battery, like a laptop. A device that could draw energy from the grid or the sun, and stay cold for hours, sometimes days, even when power was absent.

“Our major goal was to make refrigeration affordable and accessible to everyone who needs it,” Ayoola said.

So Koolboks turned cold into a pay-as-you-go service. For $10 or $20 a month, a shopkeeper could purchase refrigeration in tokens, the way they bought television subscriptions, a system Koolboks has been running for the past four and a half years.

Today, Koolboks operates in 28 countries, with more than 10,000 units across Nigeria alone.

With $11 million in new Series A funding, Koolboks is expanding its ambitions. Ayoola says the company will set up an assembly plant in Nigeria within the next 12 to 18 months, just three kilometres from the sprawling Alaba market.

The facility will be able to produce 72,000 refrigerators every year, but more importantly, it will ease the heavy costs of importing and shipping.

Those savings, Ayoola says, will be passed on to customers, cutting prices by up to 20% and making cold storage a little more reachable for families and businesses.

The plant promises 450 jobs, and each refrigerator that rolls out will carry a simple but powerful imprint: Made in Nigeria.

The new funding will also power two trade-in initiatives. The first, Koolbuy, turns ordinary fridges into solar-powered, pay-as-you-go units. The second, Scrap4New, offers discounts to customers who hand in their old refrigerators for refurbishment.

Building a first-of-its-kind climate-tech product has not been without setbacks. Import and export classification was an early headache.

“Because we were doing something entirely new, classification was a challenge. Is it solar? Is it refrigeration? Is it a solar home system?” Ayoola said.

The hardware itself was another battle. Early models with lead-acid batteries failed. The company had to reimagine its own designs, moving to lithium batteries and embedding IoT to collect data and improve durability.

Talent, too, was scarce. Often, expertise had to be imported from Europe. Yet each obstacle forced a reinvention, sharpening Koolboks’ model and resilience.

And resilience is a trait Ayoola carries into another equally tricky arena, fundraising.

Ayoola has his own philosophy on capital. “Funding isn’t the end, it’s the beginning,” he says.

Years of pitching to sceptical investors in a climate where capital is scarce have taught Ayoola a few hard rules.

First, stay focused. Markets wobble, competitors emerge, policies shift, but a company must hold its vision like a compass.

Second, deliver on promises. Investors, like customers, trade in trust. And third, align with those who believe in the long journey. “If you won’t make money for four years, say it upfront,” he advises. Better the truth now than disillusion later.

That same clarity guides Koolboks as it looks ahead to the next frontier: climate finance.

The company is working with consultants to monetise its carbon savings.

“We believe this will be the next phase of affordability for Africans. Clean cooking has tapped into it, and we’re doing the same for refrigeration,” he said.

Refrigerators, Ayoola points out, are the only household appliance that runs all day, all night, without pause.

To power them with the sun is to strike at the heart of emissions. To link them with carbon credits is to make them even more affordable for African households and businesses.