Eco-friendly cooking and heating solutions in Africa
Charcoal?
For those of you who don’t exactly know how charcoal is created, the anti-poverty group Global Citizen explains it well: “Charcoal is made from wood. Standard wood is burned in a low oxygen environment. The burning process removes water, methane, hydrogen, and tar from the wood. The result is small chunks of “char” that are almost pure carbon.”
For decades, African urban and rural households, have been cooking and heated using charcoal. Why charcoal? For the average African consumer, it is “cleaner and easier to use than firewood, cheaper and more readily available than gas or electricity” despite rising income levels.
In fact, according to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa’s “household electrification rate averaged 42% in 2016. There is wide variation in electricity access across countries, with some fragile countries having rates less than 10%.” Charcoal, by contrast, is widespread. Dalberg estimates that “most people in Nairobi live within a 50–200-metre walk from a charcoal vendor”.
Charcoal: a health and environmental emergency
However, charcoal consumption is a massive threat to the environment and human health.
“Deforestation in general is a huge problem across Africa. Researchers warn that some areas in South Africa could fully exhaust their fuelwood reserves by 2020. “ reports Global Citizen. Dalberg, the consultancy firm, asserts that “Kenya loses 10.3 million m3 of wood from its forests every year from firewood and charcoal consumption, a major contributor to the country’s 0.3% annual deforestation rate”. Dalberg also finds that “wood and charcoal fuel use, including Black Carbon emissions, contribute 25 million tonnes of CO2 eq. each year, approximately ~40% of Kenya’s total GHG emissions”.
With regards to health damage, “diseases caused by smoke from open fires and stoves claim 4.3 million lives every year. That’s more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined” argued the US administration in 2016. In Kenya, “at least 14.300 people die every year from health conditions which can be traced back to indoor air pollution” finds a UN report. According to Dalberg, “Wood and charcoal cooking lead to 0.8–1.3 and 0.3–0.4 hours lost for women (in time spent cooking and cleaning) respectively each day per urban households and 4+ hours for rural wood collectors; an avoidable time burden with efficient and clean cooking fuels”.
And yet, demand for charcoal is projected to grow extremely fast in the future. The New York Times writes: “As Africa’s population is expected to swell and urbanize at an even faster rate over the next decades, the continent’s demand for charcoal is likely to double or triple by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Program.”
We met with three SMEs that are, each of them differently, addressing the health, financial, and ecological issues related to charcoal.
Meet Lumbrick, the briquettes’ machines makers
Lumbrick is a social enterprise which leverages innovative technology developed at McGill University to transform organic waste into clean cooking fuel. The team came together in late 2016 to compete in the Hult Prize and is currently composed of three McGill graduates in International Development, Business, Civil Engineering and Political Science.
Lumbrick trains entrepreneurs in Kenya to produce briquettes as an alternative to firewood and charcoal, equipping them with its technology through a franchise model. The start-up’s local partners include the Kenyan company Bentos Energy, with which it co-develops its technology and carries out its operations, and the University of Nairobi’s Department of Chemistry, with which it measures its technology’s ecological impact. They are also partnering with the Greening Kenya Initative Fund set up by the National Treasury of Kenya, to set up a cooperative of their briquetting entrepreneurs.
Lumbrick has also been supported by World Vision Canada following their win of the World Vision Social Innovation Challenge in 2017. This year, the Lumbrick team is participating in the Hult Prize Accelerator in July and August after winning the Quito Regionals and seeks to raise seed-funding to pursue its mission.
Meet Eco-Charcoal Ltd, a briquette producer
We met Béatrice Despioch in Nairobi, Co-Founder of Eco-Charcoal Ltd. Contrary to most charcoal producers in Kenya, Eco-Charcoal Ltd. doesn’t collect charcoal dust from cut wood or industrial waste. The company produces “safe, clean, healthy briquettes simply made from pruned branches which are dried, carbonized and mixed with a natural binder.” This production processes ensures a quick regeneration of the pruned trees hence contributing to climate change mitigation. These briquettes also have low-carbon emissions. The company is selling in Nairobi its 5kg bags for 700 Kenyan shillings (~7$).
Eco-Charcoal’s production site is located at the foot of Mount Kasigau, between the two national parks of Tsavo, in the Southeast of Kenya. This region has been identified as a biodiversity hotspot by Conservation International (an American nonprofit organization), notably for its forestry. It is also recognized as a particularly vulnerable place from human activities.
Meet Burn, a cookstove manufacturer
Burn is a cookstove manufacturer that produces the market leading “Jikokoa” stove. We met one of Burn’s founders in its solar-powered factory in the suburbs of Nairobi. Burn could have chosen to manufacture in China but local economic development is part of Burn’s mission. Therefore, the company provides about 230 skilled local jobs paid above market rate in Ruiru (100km from Nairobi), 60% of the employees are women.
Burn targets the upper segment of the cookstove market. The company relies on its economic value proposition to sell stoves that are priced at $40–50. While the purchase price of a Jikokoa stove is about ten times higher than a regular one, the operating costs of using regular stoves are much higher. Its technology reduces fuel consumption and cooking time by almost 50%, which frees up income which would have otherwise been spent on fuel. Burn also enables its customers to inhale less smoke. It is therefore better for their health, their finances but also for the environnement. Burn also provides financing solutions to its customers.
In addition, Burn is working on partnerships with fuel producers to offer bundles sells to its customers. They are currently testing an offer in a refugee camp in Dadaab.
Burn is a success and can boast the following: “Since late 2013, we have sold over 459, 436 stoves. These stoves have changed the lives of 2.5M people, saving them over $117 million.”
