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Efficient Cookstoves

Improving household health conditions, reducing emissions and supporting sustainable development

Malawi
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Across the world, inhaling smoke from open fire cooking kills 4 million people world-wide, that's more than HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria combined. Rural communities in Malawi and Zambia are no different: many cook on open-fires inside their homes, which lack sufficient ventilation, so the toxic fumes released, including carbon monoxide, are inhaled. These fumes are the number one cause of respiratory diseases among women and children. As traditional open fire stoves are hard to light, they are often left smoldering and smoky between meals wasting energy and polluting.

Location
Malawi
Type
Clean Cookstoves
Standards
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Sustainable Development Goals

3. Good Health and Well-Being

Better health

with toxic fumes inside the home reduced

5. Gender Equality

Women benefit

as they as typically responsible for cooking

7. Affordable and Clean Energy

Sustainable fuel switch

to crop residues and small branches

8. Decent work and economic growth

Employment opportunities

with locally made stoves, mainly for women as stove champions

12. Responsible consumption and production

Women and artisans make their own stoves

and can rebuild as necessary

13. Climate Action

Less GHG emissions

are released into the atmosphere

15. Life on land

Pressure on forests eased  

thanks to switch to sustainable fuels  

Please note that the SDG metrics listed reflect the total impact of the umbrella project's activities and do not reflect the impact of each micro-scale project.

The Solution

The project aims to make efficient stoves available in rural communities across Malawi and Zambia. The project has been carefully designed to ensure highest possible uptake, use of the stoves and therefore positive impacts. For example, each household is provided with two stoves instead of one, so water can be boiled while cooking a meal, avoiding the use of an open fire in parallel to an efficient cookstove; it is cheap and easy to move or repair a stove, households receive step-by-step visual guides and the bricks can be made locally in the village by artisans or the women themselves; finally, families are guided on how to improve kitchen ventilation, for example, by creating new windows or building internal half-walls. The projects work with networks of local cookstove distributors–or stove champions– who are required to visit each stove once per year and receive annual bonus payments if all the stoves in their fleet are maintained and in use. Each cookstove is tracked using a GPS location and a unique serial number for transparency and monitoring.

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Image credit: C Quest Capital
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Image credit: C Quest Capital
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Image credit: C Quest Capital
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Image credit: C Quest Capital
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Image credit: C Quest Capital
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project_image_303384-10.jpg
Image credit: C Quest Capital
project_image_303384-11.jpg
Image credit: C Quest Capital
project_image_303384-12.jpg
Image credit: C Quest Capital
project_image_303384-13.jpg
Image credit: C Quest Capital
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Image credit: C Quest Capital

The Impact

The stoves are designed to increase the temperature the fuel is burnt at, leading to cleaner household air and less GHG emissions.The stoves are quick to light and encourage fuel-switching from unsustainably harvested wooden logs to sustainably harvested twigs, branches and crop residues. This eases pressure on forests– with many villages where the projects operate are located in and around protected areas or game reserves–like the Liwonde Game Park in Malawi–,this can have big impacts for biodiversity and wildlife. At the same time, this means women and girls no longer need to collect, cut and carry firewood over long distances as the smaller bits of wood are available within and around rural villages, saving them up to two hours per day. The stoves are also safer, there is no risk of toddlers touching an open flame, pots falling off or a woman dress catching alight!

Project ID: 303384
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