A third-year student of the Department of Communication Design, Mathias Charles Yabe has been named the Top Innovator and selected among the 14 winners in the Generation Restoration Challenge by the World Economic Forum. The young Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AkoFresh, received this honour out of 170 competitors from 50 countries on 22nd September 2021.
The World Economic Forum is a non-profit organization that promotes public-private partnerships around the world. The forum brings together the world's most powerful political, business, cultural, and other leaders to discuss global, regional, and industry issues. The Forum seeks to exhibit entrepreneurship in the global public interest while maintaining the highest standards of governance.
Mr. Yabe expressed his gratitude to the World Economic Forum's Uplink for organizing the incredible worldwide competition and picking his social enterprise as an awardee. According to him, the startup's success has strengthened his confidence that solving the world's complicated problems through technology is the way to go.
In the coming months, AkoFresh will receive visibility, mentoring support, connections to experts and potential investors from the World Economic Forum and its partners through the Uplink Top Innovator Engagement Program.
AkoFresh, established last year with two foreign students from India and Finland is a green cold chain enterprise offering local farmers and traders practical preservation services to help reduce post-harvest losses. It also seeks to improve livelihood and promote ecosystem resiliency in local communities.
The enterprise has designed a solar powered cold storage preservation technology to extend shelf life of perishable crops up to 21 days. This will reduce post-harvest losses and its ripple effects on the environment. They also offer small-holder farmers training on sustainable farming practices and help them get access to viable markets. AkoFresh will be piloting in the Akumadan-Afrancho community in the Ashanti Region.
AkoFresh was named a Grand Prize winner in the 2021 Fishbowl Challenge earlier this year, receiving a $25,000 seed funding for product development and community pilots in Akomadan-Afrancho. The Mills Fabrica's 2021 Techstyle for Social Good International Competition awarded the firm the OpEx Prize, as well as the Community Prize.
The University Management congratulates Mr. Charles Yabe on his achievements.
