Percy Kiptoo

Kenyan innovator Percy Kiptoo has built a career out of turning power outages and milk-spoilage statistics into a hardware-plus-software solution for East Africa’s smallholder dairies. A self-taught engineer with a degree in IT, he founded Savanna Circuits Technologies in 2017 and quickly won global attention, garnering 21 innovation prizes and securing multiple patents, for his flagship Smart Milk Cooler. The solar-powered, sensor-laden unit bolts onto existing milk cans, chills raw product on the back of a boda-boda, and uploads tamper-proof temperature and geolocation data to buyers’ dashboards. Trials across Kenya’s Rift Valley have cut post-harvest losses by up to 30 percent, boosted farmer earnings, and given processors a traceable cold chain that meets export standards.

Now serving as Savanna Circuits’ CEO, Kiptoo is scaling production, piloting pay-as-you-go financing, and adapting the platform for honey and horticulture. While pursuing a master’s in computational intelligence at the University of Nairobi, he is layering predictive-maintenance algorithms onto the coolers and exploring carbon-credit integration to reward low-emission logistics. His north-star metric remains simple: every litre saved is a litre sold, proof that smart engineering can turn fragile rural supply chains into engines of sustainable growth.