● Roam and Keep It Cool, both Earthshot Prize Finalists, have teamed up to launch Africa’s first fully electric cold-chain delivery network.
● The partnership starts with five Roam Air electric motorcycles supporting a cold-chain system that moves over 250,000 kg of fresh food weekly across Kenya’s major cities.
● Roam’s Kenyan-built electric motorcycles cut fuel costs by up to 75% and produce zero tailpipe emissions.
● The collaboration creates a scalable model to fight food waste, grow rural incomes, and reduce emissions through local innovation.
In a major move for climate resilience and food security, Earthshot Prize 2022 Finalist Roam and Earthshot Prize 2024 winners Keep It Cool (KIC) have partnered to launch Africa’s first fully electric cold-chain distribution network, combining solar-powered refrigeration with clean electric delivery motorcycles.
The collaboration begins with five Roam Air electric motorcycles added to Keep It Cool’s smart cold-chain system. KIC already moves more than 250,000 kilograms of fresh food each week to over 4,000 small businesses and 40 supermarkets across major cities in Kenya, including Nairobi, Kisumu, Nakuru, and Mombasa. Designed and built in Kenya, Roam Air motorcycles carry up to 240 kg and reduce running costs by up to 75% compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) motorcycles, making them affordable and practical for delivery businesses.
This marks a significant step in addressing East Africa’s post-harvest crisis, where nearly half of fish and poultry is lost before reaching markets due to a lack of cold storage and transport. Keep It Cool tackles this challenge with solar-powered cold rooms near fishing ports, hybrid delivery trucks, and a digital platform that links producers directly to retailers with guaranteed prices, helping remove middlemen and improve profits.
So far, KIC has helped over 5,600 fisherfolk raise their incomes by more than 15% and reduced post-harvest losses by 98% for over 1.5 million kg of food. With Roam’s electric motorcycles now closing the last-mile delivery gap, the system is fully clean, from the point of harvest to the point of sale.
Both companies are scaling quickly. Roam was recently named Kenya’s fastest-growing company by the Financial Times, expanded its sales and charging infrastructure services out of Nairobi, and launched its new Roam Air Generation 2, designed with input from Kenyan riders. Keep It Cool is set to open the country’s largest solar-powered cold-chain hub this year, with a 70-tonne capacity and a plan to reach 1.6 million people by 2030.
By combining clean energy, smart logistics, and African-made technology, Roam and KIC are proving that it’s possible to grow rural incomes, reduce waste, and fight climate change—all at once.
Elijah Gakomo, Sales Executive at Roam: “This partnership shows how clean transport can drive real impact, reducing emissions, cutting costs, and strengthening local supply chains. Together, we’re proving that the future of logistics in Africa is electric, efficient, and built at home.”
Abigail Gichigi, Operations Director, Keep IT Cool: “Each year, we’re saving nearly 400 tonnes of fish that would otherwise end up in landfills—by investing in efficient cold storage and clean energy-powered cold logistics. These innovations are making safe, affordable food distribution scalable. With our partnership with Roam, we’re accelerating this impact even further—delivering tangible benefits for both people and the planet.
Jason Knauf, CEO of The Earthshot Prize: “This collaboration is a shining example of urgent optimism in action. Roam and Keep It Cool are proving that cleaner air, healthier lives, and greater prosperity are within reach. It’s a powerful reminder of what The Earthshot Prize was created to do: spotlight bold ideas, back the brilliant minds behind them, and show the world that change is not only possible, it’s already happening.”
About Roam
Roam is a Kenyan-based electric mobility company developing tailored transport solutions for the African market. Recognized globally as a finalist for the Earthshot Prize and one of the 2024 Impact/100 startups by the Norrsken Foundation, Roam is leading a local shift toward cleaner, more efficient mobility. Its innovations — including a 6,000-kilometer solar-powered journey from Nairobi to Stellenbosch on the Roam Air electric motorcycle — continue to demonstrate the durability and practicality of electric transport on the continent. In 2025, Roam was named Africa’s top 40 and Kenya’s fastest-growing company by the Financial Times.
About Keep It Cool
Keep It Cool, Earthshot Prize Winner 2024, is a Nairobi-based startup redefining food supply chains in East Africa through its smart cold chain platform, Markiti. By integrating solar-powered cold storage, hybrid transport, and direct-to-market technology, the company drastically reduces post-harvest losses, improves supply chain efficiency, and guarantees market access for smallholder farmers and fishers. Its tech-driven approach cuts food waste by 98%, slashes emissions by 51%, and increases incomes across underserved communities—proving that clean, inclusive logistics is possible and scalable.
About The Earthshot Prize
Founded by Prince William and incubated in the Royal Foundation in 2020 for a year before becoming an independent platform/organisation, The Earthshot Prize is a global environmental prize and platform designed to discover, accelerate and scale groundbreaking solutions to repair and regenerate the planet. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon, The Earthshot Prize aims to catalyse an Earthshot challenge to urgently encourage and scale innovative solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate, where communities, oceans and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030. The five challenges are: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-Free World; and Fix Our Climate
