Growing up under the care of his grandmother in rural eastern Kenya, Dysmus Kisilu saw how hard farmers worked - and, often, how little they earned.
"The average age of farmers is 65 - and they're a bit sceptical," Kisilu noted."Most farmers are not exposed to technology like cooling and irrigation. It was all very new for them and they thought it would be too expensive."
A woman at a Kenyan health clinic ordered one of the $400 units, which can be paid off in installments using the country's M-Pesa mobile-phone-based payment system, then introduced Kisilu to five more buyers. Kisilu said the cooling units increasingly were being turned to uses he'd never imagined, including storing breast milk for lactating mothers at Kakuma camp in northern Kenya, so they could work during the day while others watched their babies.
That led him to launch"Each One Teach One", a peer-to-peer learning programme that aims to expand solar energy skills among the young, particularly women, who make up 60% of those trained so far.