Adekoyejo Kuye has the unhurried air of a man with nowhere else to be. Sitting at Somerset Westview in Kilimani, Nairobi on July 28 for Halcyon’s Africa Food & Climate Resilience programme, the 2026 cohort member speaks with calm, effortless precision.
Kuye is the founder of KAMIM Technologies, a Nigerian climate-tech company building solar-powered cold storage infrastructure to reduce post harvest losses and connect smallholder farmers to markets. But running a business was never part of his original plan.
How Kuye moved From Mechanical Ambitions to the Field
Academic Roots: Raised by a chemical engineering professor and a nurse, Kuye grew up taking toys apart to understand how they worked. “From a young age, I knew I wanted to do engineering. I had toys, and the first thing I would do was scatter them,” he recalls.
The Turning Point: While doing national youth service in rural Enugu State, he carried solar panels for an unpaid gig, getting his first glimpse into rural farming realities.
The Leap Home: After completing a renewable energy master’s in Germany funded by Amazon night shifts, he skipped the safe European career path and bought a one-way ticket back to Nigeria. “Are they using juju to pull you home?” he recalls a friend asking.
Building rural solar mini grids for health centres, Kuye noticed farmers couldn’t afford systems that lacked direct economic value. When he asked why, they pointed to post harvest decay.
Missing Infrastructure: Cold storage existed in urban supermarkets, but not near small farms.
The Power of Pre Cooling: Produce like tomatoes degrade rapidly in heat. “Once you harvest, rapidly removing the heat from the produce can significantly extend its shelf life. That basic infrastructure simply wasn’t there,” Kuye explains.
“I had no plan to run a business,” Kuye admits. “Everything I know about business, I learned on the job out of necessity.” Working full time on cold chain systems since 2019, he shifted focus to making cold storage financially accessible for smallholders.
The real breakthrough came during their first rural trial, where farmers previously thought cold storage was only for meat and fish. “We kept some tomatoes outside and put others inside the cold room. After 21 days, we showed them the difference,” says Kuye. “You needed to see their faces. That was when I knew: okay, we are doing something important.”
