Overview of MVP Stove Program
In MVP experience across several sites we have seen that there is a strong demand for efficient cooking products across rural Africa. The rural populations understand the value of fuelwood savings and are willing to pay for their purchase – to a certain extent of affordability. However, access to these products and services in remote regions remains a big challenge.
The motivation behind introducing biomass cookstoves to the Millennium Villages was to identify appropriate technologies that not only provide a highly efficient combustion (thereby reducing the stress on the environment) but also to do it in a manner that does not deviate a lot from traditional cooking preferences. Following initial testing in the lab at Columbia University, several selected brands of cookstoves underwent detailed field testing using a process called the controlled cooking test (CCT) protocol. The process of introducing new technologies to the community in the MVP was based on ensuring that accurate quantitative efficiencies (usually between 35%-40% fuelwood savings have been reported) could be established for each cookstove under field conditions, using locally sourced fuelwood and food items, and ensuring buy-in from the community.
MVP staff then trained 10-15 cookstove vendors (frequently shopkeepers, youth groups or women’s groups) to learn the technical basics of the cookstoves, best practices in using them, the pricing for each model as well as to be present to answer any further questions from the community regarding the cookstove program. After training, vendors are ready to begin sales in the community.
Long term sustainability of the program will depend upon the successful incorporation of commercial partners who can extend the program and replace the current assistance provided by the project site teams and take the program beyond the borders of the Millennium Villages to other parts of the country. Furthermore, this partnership would be necessary for capturing the carbon revenue potential of the cookstoves that can be used to subsidize the cookstoves and increase affordability for the masses.
Key Lessons Learned:
Stove Program Implementation
in the
Millennium Development Villages
Not all stoves are made equally. Although locally made stovesareavailable in many countries, most do not have the uniformity or fuel saving capacity of alternatives that are manufactured industrially. Because locally made stoves are often made by hand, there is a large variability in their construction, durability and efficiency. Additionally, although local stoves may have benefits over a 3-stone fire, often these are smaller than claimed and do not compare to other stoves on the market that have been manufactured industrially.
Importance of testing under local conditions. When testing a stove’s fuel efficiency it is important to test stoves under local conditions. Because local foods, local cooking practices and wood varieties vary across countries, and often even within countries, fuel savings recorded through CCTs can vary from country to country. MVP has found that generally stoves are ranked according to efficiency in the same order across countries, but the fuel efficiency against the three-stone fire can vary as much as 15%. Additionally, in these circumstances stove testing becomes an event where villagers can witness the fuel savings of the improved stoves and this helps promote the product in the community.
Allow women to test the stoves for several weeks.
MVP hasfound that allowing households to keep and use the stoves over the course of two weeks helps build confidence in the new product and allows women to see how it can positively impact their lives. MVP employs a model where stoves are loaned to women for two weeks and at the end of two weeks they have the option to buy.
Create a demand-driven price model. MVP villagers across project countries have disparate abilities to pay for an improved cookstove. It is important to gauge a community’s willingness to pay for a stove and price the stoves accordingly. The MVP model prices the cookstove between $10 – $16 and subsidizes the remaining stove cost. In the future, MVP expects that the currently subsidized portion of the stove will be covered by carbon financing through the voluntary market.
Seasons matter. MVP site teams have discovered that seasons impact villagers’ demand for stoves at certain times of the year. Site teams note that communities often express greater desires for stoves during the rainy seasons when dry fuel wood is harder to gather and firewood to purchase is more expensive on the local markets.
Availability of free or inexpensive fire wood impacts demand.
A site’s local biodiversity can have an impact on the popularity and adoption of improved stoves. Because one of the benefits of the improved cookstove is the reduction of fuelwood needed for any particular cooking event, villagers who freely acquire abundant firewood close to their homes often find the stoves less attractive. Deforested areas, areas with scarce fuel wood, or conflict affected areas where collecting wood can be dangerous may find more village demand than those with reliable, sustainable fuelwood sources.
Strengthen community business skills through support and training. While some of the selected stove vendors may be shop owners, others may be ambulant vendors. In both cases it proves prudent to provide training in stove use and function as well as basic accounting and record keeping skills. In the MVP project, it is important to know who purchased the stoves in order to be able to later go back and survey these clients. Later, it may become valuable to identify stove-purchasers for carbon monitoring purposes and many of these record keeping skills must be taught.
Choose reliable vendors. In a program where vendors are loaned stoves as working capital, there is always a risk of non-repayment by the vendors. This can be partially avoided by measures such as having community members and family members vouch for, or essentially “guarantee” the vendor, or by asking vendors to put a down-payment on the cookstoves, to be returned upon repayment of the initial capital. In MVP experience, choosing reliable vendors and having a strong incentives system in place to ensure repayment can lower the instances of non-repayment of the project’s capital investment. Furthermore, involving local community heads at the onset of the program often affords the option of going to them in the event of a defaulter. These community have proven to be allies in ensuring the success of the program.
Provide continuing technical assistance. Partially because the stove program is a subsidized initiative, technical assistance must be provided to the stove cooperative through the first several cycles of selling, ordering and purchasing. In MVP experience, burgeoning cooperatives often do not have the capacity or motivation to place orders at the beginning without site team support. After these first few cycles of ordering and selling, site teams assume that a strong enough connection will be established between the sub-distributor and the local cooperatives and vendors thus limiting the support required from the project in the future.
Create in-country partnerships. Improved stove technologies, growing SMS capacity, emphasis on carbon emissions reduction and the focus on stoves as a way to improve women and girl’s health, have all contributed to a boom in the number of stove programs operating in Africa. Creating relationships with other in-country organizations organized around similar objectives can serve both for knowledge sharing and, in some cases, actually allow for bulk transport of products, thus lowering shipping prices.
Size matters:
The primary feedback MVP has received from users is that the stoves are often too small for the pot sizes used in the villages. MVP field staff suggests that this has an effect on the rate of adoption of improved cookstoves in villages. Most families cook for over ten people at each meal and they often ask for stoves that are large enough to accommodate their needs. Survey responses show that most families will continue using three-stone fires for boiling water, cooking large meals, and other activities that require a large pot.
Investigate local capacity to manufacture stoves: Artisans at some sites have begun fashioning replicas of the rocket stoves introduced by MVP. This could work for or against the progress already being made at these sites. On one hand, making the stoves locally would significantly reduce costs and ensure long-term sustainability of the practice of using improved cookstoves. On the other hand, if stoves cannot be manufactured to consistent specifications, their efficiencies cannot be vouched for, which could work against the possibility of future carbon financing in these communities. Partnering with a stove manufacturer, for example StoveTec, to give proper training on best practices for designing and manufacturing stoves could ensure that if stoves will be copied, they continue providing similar benefits already in progress.
