Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu

Ikegwuonu is from a farming family in Imo State, Nigeria. He earned a bachelor's degree in history and international studies from Imo State University and, in 2009, a master's degree in cooperation and development from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, in Italy. He also holds certificates in subjects including water resources management, poverty and human rights, and environmental education from various European universities.

After finishing school, Ikegwuonu worked for an NGO dealing with HIV among farmers. In 2003, when he was 21, he founded the Smallholders Foundation, to provide information to farmers on sustainable practices; he later added an interactive radio show, with farmers using solar-powered handsets with a Wi-Fi connection to communicate with the broadcasters. By 2010, it had approximately 250,000 listeners a day.

In 2012, Ikegwuonu travelled to Dresden, where he met with scientists to discuss a cold storage system they had designed. After initial implementation in 2014 of food coolers based on their design at markets, in 2015, he launched ColdHubs, a company that rents solar-powered chilled storage space to farmers and fishers, reducing food waste and increasing their profits.

He has also designed a trolley that prolongs the shelf life of cassava. In 2018, he became a Biodiversity fellow of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science at the University of Oxford, England.