By Eamonn Ryan
Speaking at the GCCA Africa 2026 Conference in Johannesburg, GCCA Africa chairman Newton Matope (CEO of Cold Solutions Africa) warned that too much of Africa’s cold chain still operates in isolation – outside formal industry structures and without a collective voice. In his opening remarks, she argued that while individual facilities may cope day to day, the continent will only achieve true resilience, influence, and growth when operators, investors, and regulators begin to act as an integrated ecosystem rather than a scattering of standalone businesses.
© Cold Link Africa
Across Africa, the majority of cold chain capacity still operates outside formal industry association structures. For many businesses, this is simply the way things have always been done: heads down, focused on day-to-day operations, dealing with power cuts, equipment failures, and regulatory surprises in isolation.
But isolation carries a cost.
Without a collective platform, businesses are more vulnerable to:
- Systemic disruptions: from grid failures to supply chain shocks
- Talent shortages: training staff only to lose them, with no ecosystem strategy for skills
- Regulatory changes: rules rewritten without the industry’s voice shaping them
When policymakers ask, “What does the industry think?”, the answer is too often assembled from too few voices. The result is policy that may be well intentioned but poorly aligned with operational reality.
This is where active engagement with GCCA becomes more than a membership perk – it becomes a strategic risk mitigation tool. Through structures like the Africa Regional Council, businesses can:
- Help define training standards that reflect real-world conditions
- Contribute data that strengthens the case for regulatory alignment and cross-border facilitation
- Shape energy and infrastructure discussions in ways that recognise the true cost of unreliability
In this model, the cold chain stops being a set of isolated facilities and becomes a regional system with shared standards and shared influence. But systems do not build themselves. They are built by people who show up, speak up, and bring others with them.
That is why the GCCA Africa 2026 theme – ‘Time for Dialogue’ – comes with concrete asks, not just aspirations.
If active engagement is the path forward, what does GCCA actually want from participants in practical terms? The closing message from Sara Stickler offers three specific, actionable invitations to transform a conference into a working forum.