Evaluating Lessons from Others' Past Attempts
There has been over $500million contributed to the "clean stoves" effort by the World Bank during the last 7yrs to 2022. Most recently, the Africa Development Bank has committed $2billion towards addressing access to clean cooking.
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However, most of these efforts are focused on providing communities with alternative fueled stoves that often see limited uptake due to the cost of stove specific fuel and the changes required to cooking process that often impact the flavour of the food.
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Why should you support us, and what do we do differently from other efforts?
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An Overview of Existing Solutions
Clean Stoves
Intended to enable greater burn efficiency using either design elements or a different fuel
A large scale randomised trial (American Economic Journal, 2016 ) found:
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Any positive effects measured in first year of use, disappear in second year
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Stoves are used irregularly and inappropriately and not maintained
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Stoves do not suit the cooking practices of targeted cultural groups
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The NJP Primary Care Respiratory Medicine Journal (NPJ, 2020) states that “In the real world clean cook stoves have been incredibly challenging to implement. Adoption rates frequently remain unreported, but studies that report on adoption success use descriptions as ‘largely discouraging’, ‘a mere 10%’, ‘only 4%’, ‘rare’, and ‘very low.’”
Solar Stoves
Solar Stoves use parabolic reflectors to direct sunlight onto a cooking dish
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Narrow uptake (requires changes in cooking habits—types of food that can be cooked, cooking
methodology and the time when food can be cooked (Energy Policy Journal, 2016))
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Can only be used outside—for many cultural groups food cooked in public must be shared
Gas/Electricity
Propane/Gas or electric cooking facilities
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Often prohibitively expensive or unavailable for economically vulnerable communities
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The electrical grid in many locations is unstable and unreliable
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A lack of standards increases the likelihood of explosions/gas leaks
Outdoor Cooking
Changing the community member's cooking location from inside to outside
Although a seemingly obvious solution, such a shift has two major problems
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Outdoor food is common food—especially in subsistence communities this can result in food shortages​
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Cooking outside exposes those cooking to predators
An Overview of the Key Players
There are some highly efficient clean cooking devices currently being distributed across Africa. Whilst they reduce levels of toxic smoke, there are two key issues with this methodology: when used inside, they still produce smoke (howbeit less) and they require the user to change their cooking practices (reducing long term uptake).
Mukuru Stoves
These stoves are powered by processed biomass made from charcoal, wood, and sugarcane. They provide a reduced emissions option. They still produce smoke when placed inside huts and the fuel source requirements can prevent uptake.
African Clean Energy
Described as a solar-biomass hybrid energy system, the Ace 1 allows the user to burn wood, animal waste and crop residue efficiently. It also is able to be plugged into a solar panel.
However, it relies on the user changing their existing cooking practices.
EcoSafi Stoves
This clean stove uses a special blend of biomass including agricultural waste. The stove is optimised to work with this fuel, limiting its widespread adoption amongst the more economically vulnerable communities.