Emmastella Wangui Gakuo
Emmastella Wangui Gakuo is a Kenyan ag-tech entrepreneur and co-founder–chief operating officer of Savanna Circuit Technologies, the Eldoret based start-up building climate-smart cold-chain solutions for East Africa’s smallholder farmers. A communications-development graduate of Moi University, she met co-founder Arnold Bett at an innovation boot camp in 2018 and helped turn his prototype solar-powered milk chiller into a commercially viable product line.
Today Savanna Circuit manufactures Maziwa Plus – off-grid, battery-buffered chillers mounted on motorbikes and tuk-tuks that cool raw milk from 35 °C to 4 °C within 20 minutes, extending shelf life from five hours to three days. Under Gakuo’s stewardship the company has deployed 420 units across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, cutting post-harvest dairy losses by an estimated 1.5 million litres a year and boosting farmer incomes by up to 30 percent. She has forged partnerships with SNV, FAO, and Equity Bank to offer equipment on pay-as-you-chill leases and carbon-credit revenue sharing.
Gakuo oversees strategy, branding and investor relations; her fundraising efforts have secured US $2.8 million in grants and seed capital, including wins at the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge (2022) and the Milken-Motsepe Prize in Agri-Tech (runner-up, 2024). Passionate about inclusive growth, she runs Girls Cool Too, a mentorship programme that trains young women in refrigeration technology and agribusiness management.
Recognised in Business Daily’s Top 40 Under 40 Women (2025) and Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 alumni network, Gakuo envisions a continent-wide cold chain that turns farm surpluses into market security while shrinking food-system emissions.