In the Ikaram MVP, there was initial reluctance to buy cookstoves because of the plentiful wood supply in the cluster. People felt their supply would never run out. In response, the site team introduced Environmental Week to educate the community on the importance of conservation. The week started by meeting community leaders, after which a stove rally reinforced these points and highlighted the role of stoves in conservation. For the rally, we loaded up pick-up trucks with loudspeakers and stoves and traveled from village to village discussing the importance and benefits of the cookstoves. So far, we’ve sold 300 stoves and counting!

The Millennium Village Project (MVP)’s Household Stove Program was awarded a special achievement award for “Meeting Community Needs” at the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air Forum (PCIA)’s bi-annual Forum in Lima, Peru. The award is “in appreciation and recognition of the MVP’s dedication to meeting community needs through household energy interventions,” and recognized the project’s dedication to tailoring programs by country and region to meet the cooking needs of households.

MVP’s Energy and Income Generation Specialist, Katie Freeman, lead two workshop sessions on “Meeting Community Needs” in the Millennium Village Project’s stove programs.

The US EPA-sponsored PCIA brings together 460 individuals, nonprofits, governments, research organizations and businesses from around the world dedicated to technical and policy solutions to improved cooking in the developing world. At the invitation of the government of Peru and first lady Pilar Nores, the 2011 PCIA Form hosted 351 partners from 40 countries for five days of workshops, technical presentations and case studies from successful programs around the world aimed at accelerating action that reduces smoke exposure from cooking and heating practices—and ultimately improves the health, livelihood, and quality of life for millions of people around the world.

The MVP’s household stove program is at the core of the MVP’s energy sector and increases access to improved cooking technologies, reducing environmental stress, time/labor burden and indoor air pollution (IAP) associated with traditional cooking. To date, the program has:

•Conducted Controlled Cooking Tests (CCTs) in eight sites across seven countries to test locally made stoves, Envirofit stoves, and StoveTec stoves against the three‐stone fire.
• Launched results‐based household stove programs in six sites across five countries: Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mali, Uganda and Nigeria.
• Sold over 7,000 household stoves at a 0%‐50% subsidy.
• Decreased fuelwood collection times by up to 50% for over 1,000 households in Africa

Between October 2009 and January 2010, MASEF performed cooking demonstrations in villages throughout
the cluster to market and sell all three types of Lakika stoves. It was during one of such demonstrations that Madame Aminata Coulibaly, the women body president, purchased a Nafacaman stove for 1500CFA (about $3.15).

In December 2010, a year after her purchase, MVP visited Madame Aminata Coulibaly’s home and found
that the improved cookstove was still in use. Madame Aminata told us:

“Before getting this stove, I spent 1250CFA (US$2.60) per week on a donkey cart load of wood. We have a large family and this wood would be gone in a week. During the rainy season, all domestic expenses come out of the women’s pockets. We buy the condiments for food. When the children are sick, it falls to us to buy their medicine. The men usually have money during and after the harvest season but sometimes, a husband’s harvest is poor and there’s nothing he can do about it. It then falls to the wives to provide for the family. With the Nafacaman, the wood I used in one week now lasts two weeks. This leaves more money for buying food and
taking care of the children. ”

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Straight from the airport to Segou, Mali where the Tiby office is located. The Tiby MV cluster comprises 39 villages accessed by a bumpy road about an hour from Segou, the regional capital. The Tiby site team already launched a stove program (pictured above) using locally-manufactured stoves. They’d tasked MASEF, a Segou-based NGO, with introducing and selling Lakika stoves.

Lakika in the Malian language of Bambara means original. Stoves with the Lakika designation are certified by AMADER – the Malian Agency for the Development of Domestic Energy and Rural Electrification) and GTZ – the German aid organization. To receive Lakika certification, a stove maker has to be trained by an AMADER partner organization. In our region, that partner is MASEF – the Social Action Movement for Education and Training.

My time here will be spent testing the various available stoves to get a clear picture of their efficiencies while conducting focus groups in the cluster to understand the energy needs and cooking practices of the Tiby MV cluster.

Testing in Potou was formative because it highlighted key considerations to keep in mind during CCTs. In a place with intricate cooking practices, standardizing CCTs is of utmost importance. Thieb Jen is a dish of several steps. We ended up standardizing this process and asking all CCT participants to follow what became a cooking protocol of sorts. For example, some families covered steaming items with a cloth, and others with a plastic bag. But because most households steamed with cloth, we asked all participants to use cloth. We also standardized the amount of water used for steaming Couscous and steaming could only commence after the water had started boiling vigorously.

After one month of running controlled cooking tests (CCTs) in 30 households throughout the MV cluster of Potou, Senegal, the results are in. The locally manufactured Djaambar had an average specific fuel consumption (SFC) for both couscous and the local dish of rice with fish (thieb jen) on par with that of the imported StoveTec and Enviroft stoves.. However, the women who tested the Djaambar, Stovetec and Envirofits felt that Djaambars were:

1. too expensive,

2. not sold in the cluster, and

3. gave off too much smoke during cooking.

One never knows exactly what to expect from site to site. In Nigeria, there weren’t any locally manufactured stoves available in the clusters, so our decision came down to choosing between two imported stoves. Senegal is a different scenario. There is a local stove market that could be adversely affected by the introduction of an imported stove. Furthermore, with an SFC on par with that of the imported stoves, there is even less justification for introducing an outside player. However, smoke and kitchen health are a major concern. It seems our options are:

1. Focus on business development to figure out ways to reduce the costs that make the stove expensive.

2. Strengthen the local supply chain as part of the focus on business development. This way, people who have wanted to buy the stove are able to find it in their local market.

3. Encourage the manufacturers to improve their design in any way they can to reduce the smoke given off by the stove.

The controlled cooking test (CCT) is designed to assess the performance of the improved stove relative to the common or traditional stoves that the improved model is meant to replace. Stoves are compared as they perform a standard cooking task that is actually done by local people every day. However, the tests are designed in a way that minimizes the influence of other factors and allows for the test conditions to be reproduced.

In order to pre-screen solutions that would meet the technical specification standards, Columbia University labs tested various available cookstoves in the market to identify the top few in each category. These cookstoves were initially tested for their heat transferring abilities, general quality of manufacturing as well as for overall efficiency. In order to establish the performance of these improved stoves in the context of the Millennium Villages, the stoves also undergo Controlled Cooking Tests (CCTs) in the Millennium Village (MVs), testing the stoves for efficiency in the local context.

Click here for full MVP Household Stove Testing Protocol – Controlled Cooking Test (CCT)

We completed 12 paired cooking tests and were hoping to begin seeing some kind of trend. This isn’t too much to ask because after 12 tests in other sites, we had an idea of the kind of behavior to expect from the data we were collecting. Senegal has been a different beast entirely. You could break down what we’ve done at other sites down to two basic tests: 1) boiling starch in water – corn flour, guinea corn flour, yams, cassava etc 2) boiling a protein – beans. In Senegal there’s frying, then boiling in the oil that was just fried with during which you’re busy steaming over the boiling that comprises the frying you’d done.

Things that are helping make sense of the data include:

1. Take pictures of every pot during the test. This will come in handy later if you need to know what kind of wood was used, the condition of the fire and how much tending was or wasn’t provided.

2. Standardize cooking practices as much as possible. With steaming and frying and boiling in fried oil etc, it’s necessary to make sure that everyone is doing the same thing. Most importantly, when making Couscous, we noticed that some people waited for the water to boil before they began steaming while others placed their Couscous on cold water and then boiled the water. Also, most people cover their Couscous with cloth, one house covered with plastic. Things like this could affect data in unusual ways.

3. Do more tests. While the first 12 tests have provided some interesting data, we are learning that cooking practices may affect stove performance. With subsequent tests, we’ll pay more attention to this intriguing development.

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.

Watch a 5:23-minute video essay of what we’re up to in the Millennium Village of Potou, Senegal. This video describes how to field-test improved firewood cookstoves. It also includes an interview with one of the women who tested the stoves.

Just got back from the field and I’ve got photos for you to look at. I haven’t given you very much context so please go ahead and ask questions about them.

The main thing I wanted to get across, however, is that there’s a stove factory in Wahal Diam, a village here in the Potou MVP cluster in Senegal. These women make the ceramic inserts that go into the metal casing for the stoves. I wouldn’t characterize this is a stove in the rocket design. But it got me thinking that Stovetec should consider setting up a manufacturing base in Senegal.

Workmanship is really good here and in Dakar. There’s already an industry that’s involved in making stoves. Granted it’s very cottage and would need some upgrading, but these women who make the ceramic inserts are hard workers and are eager to expand. So eager in fact that they burned bridges with a village blacksmith who was taking too long to make the metal casing and have found a blacksmith in Dakar to forge the metal for them.

Given the proper dimensions and composition, I think it’s very possible we could have Stovetecs manufactured in Senegal.

We covered the Pampaida Ambulance with posters and hit the road to broadcast the benefits of cooking with Stovetec. This idea was put forward by members of the Pampaida Energy Coop. They hired a local DJ who fitted the ambulance with a microphone and three large speakers. Hassan and Abdullahi from the Saulawa axis are some of the most active members of the coop. They stayed with the van as it traveled through all major axes of the cluster; from Saulawa, to Fadamar Kale, to Kwari, ending at Pampaida. They helped to decorate van and were present to answer any questions that people had.

In each village, the loud music generated considerable interest and brought people out of their homes. When the van stopped, people would hear Abdullahi’s voice broadcast over the speakers talking about this improved stove that could use for one week the amount of wood you would use in two or three days. While he spoke, Hassan would take a sample stove into the gathered crowd to give one on one explanations.

When the enumerators (first three counting L-R) weren’t filling in information that Abdullahi may have missed, they sang call-and-response songs with the gathered kids: what is it that we want? Stovetec is what we want! Before leaving the village, the announcer would provide the names of Stovec vendors in that village and reiterate the N2500 cost. Less than an hour into the rally on our first day, Hassan (5th counting L-R) sold two stoves.

Wednesdays are official market days in Saulawa. People from all over the cluster would gather at the Saulawa market for several hours that day. On the first day of the rally, the van had only stopped at major meeting points in the cluster. So on Wednesday, we visited all far-flung settlements we’d missed the previous day. By 3pm, when people had returned from their morning farm duties and the market was full, the van pulled into the main market square. We’d started the day with five stoves in the van. Abdullahi (6th counting L-R) sold three stoves before we arrived at the market. And within minutes of parking, Hassan had sold the last two stoves we had.

Stove sales are off to a solid start. By week’s end, a total of eight stoves had been sold within the cluster. One stove was sold at Pampaida, five stoves were sold at Saulawa, two at Kwari, and none at Fadamar Kale. Several coop members were yet to collect their stoves from the local storekeepers.

Looking forward, we will hold training sessions for members of the coop on how to generate and improve sales. I’ve begun discussing this idea with Mr. Lekan, the Pampaida business development coordinator. Training times would be avenues to receive feedback from members of the coop on what they are learning and an opportunity to share ideas for how to improve stove sales.

Starting this week, enumerators will be facilitating cooking competitions among women of various settlements. We are asking women who had tested the stoves to gather ten to twenty of their friends and neighbors for a Stovetec demo. During these meetings, the Stovetec would be pitted against a traditional three-stone fire as proof of its energy savings – much like a public controlled cooking test. This would also be a forum for Q&A’s between the community and the women and enumerators who have had experience using and working with the stoves.

This week we held two training sessions for members of the Pampaida Energy Coop. The first day focused on costs and commissions while the second day focused on marketing and record keeping.

Marketing:

In order to prepare vendors for whatever questions they might be asked as they become advocates for efficient stoves, we discussed what we learned from our tests in Pampaida.

• For tuwo, the food cooked most in Pampaida, Stovetec used on average about 60% less wood than the 3-stone fire. Only 10 out of the 30 households surveyed purchase firewood.
• For those that purchase wood, they spend an average of N55 each day during the four months of rainy season, which translates to N6600 ($44) per season. With the Stovetec, they could keep at least half of what this for themselves.
• For those that collect, using the Stovetec would save them time since the wood they collect would last them longer.
• People also noted that an added advantage of using the Stovetec was that it was easier to start and keep fires going because the Stovetec is not as affected by sudden gusts of wind as the 3-stone fire.

Advertising:

The coop suggested that we hold a mass rally throughout the cluster with loudspeakers, drums and posters to announce that we’ve begun selling stoves. Certain coop members have had experience in organizing such rallies in the past for political and cultural rallies. We agreed to this idea and have asked the coop to make all the necessary plans. We also designed a marketing poster and advertisement jingle to go along with the sales launch planned for Tuesday.

The coop explained that the rally truck will be covered with these posters and will go from village to village with loudspeakers, drummers and dancers. Our tagline for this marketing campaign reads, Stovetec: have you bought yours?

Poster translation: What people are saying: modern stove; well-designed stove; clean stove; the stove that doesn’t cause tears; attractive stove;  fast stove. Oh my! 40 minutes is more than enough. Food is ready!…. Stovetec: have you bought yours?

Caveat: When you design a poster and give it to a professional printer, make sure you vet a sample copy before he prints the entire batch. I learned this the hard way when 210 copies of a dull and entirely redesigned version of the poster above was handed to me on Monday morning. Without my consent, he’d changed the design. Kept none of the original colors and was annoyed that I wasn’t happy with him.

Keeping track of stoves and buyers:

We have a list of all households in the cluster. Vendors will record the names of people they sell to and each week. We have provided each vendor with a Record Sheet in which to record the buyer’s name, settlement, and date of transaction. The enumerators will compare these names against the household master list.

Storage

We agreed that each of the four main axes – Pampaida, Kwari, Saulawa and Fadamar Kale – should have a locally accessible storeroom so vendors won’t have to travel far to collect stoves for sale. The coop will elect storekeepers who will hold the keys to the local storerooms. Enumerators will keep spares in the event that the storekeeper is not reachable.

Each vendor is allowed to take no more than ten stoves at a time from the store. After a vendor sells all ten of her stoves, she hands the money from these sales to an enumerator and the enumerator signs the vendor’s completed Record Sheet. With this completed Record Sheet, the vendor presents this signed Record Sheet to the storekeeper allowing her to receive her next batch of ten stoves. No stoves will be released from the store without this signed and dated document.

Costs, Commissions, and Credit:

The actual cost of each stove is N2850 ($19). Millennium Promise is selling the stoves to the cooperative at a cost of N2350. The coop in turn makes a N150 ($1) commission on every stove completely sold. There is no commission for partial sales. A sale is considered complete when the entire N2500 for the stove has been handed over to an enumerator. A sale remains incomplete as long as there is an outstanding balance to be collected. The minimum deposit for which a vendor will release a stove to a buyer is N1500 ($10). Commissions will be distributed after we’ve exhausted our first batch of 1000 stoves.

Before training, I’d suggested that we allow people pay their balance in two monthly installments of N500 each. However, we were curious to hear the coop’s opinion on this. When asked how much time they were willing to give people to pay the remaining N1000 balance, one month was their reply. Upon further deliberation, they added that if a person did not pay up after a month, they would take back the stove and the debtor would lose his deposit. Although we thought this was rather harsh, we decided that this was ultimately their business and they had a better idea of how things work in their community than we did. However, we made it clear that seizing stoves should be a very last resort.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can we sell outside the cluster?

Eventually. For now, we’re focusing on the Millennium Village cluster but as sales grow and every household has had a chance to buy a stove, you can begin selling outside the cluster.

What if I buy two stoves and give one to my brother who doesn’t live in the cluster?

We can’t stop you from doing that. But by doing so, you’re sabotaging your chances of making higher profits in future. If your brother knows that you bought it at N2500 – which is far below market value, he’ll tell other people outside the cluster. When you’re ready to sell outside the cluster, your market will be a lot less willing to pay full market price.

Between Weeks 5 and 7, test results indicated a preference for Stovetec stoves. The project placed an order to deliver 1000 stoves to the community. Most women surveyed indicated that they would buy the stoves for no more than $10. We decided to conduct a random poll of about half of the men whose houses were surveyed to see if they could afford more than $10 per stove. Some men said they could pay as much as N3000 ($20), because of their perceived advantage of an improved stove, but they mentioned that it would be too expensive for the general cluster population. Over the course of the week, with the deliberation and input of the site team, the final price was set at N2500 ($16.70).

At the end of week 7, the cooperative is yet to open an account or be officially registered with the local government. It appears the main impediment is the N4000 ($27) fee required by the local government to register a cooperative. Each member of the coop has been asked to contribute N500 and this process is taking well over two weeks. We’ve been assured that the coop will submit its application on Tuesday, May 11.

The payment for the cookstoves has been received by Kadsol, the local Stovetec distributor in Nigeria, and our shipment of is enroute. Training for the vendors/co-op members will include communicating the following:

• Bookkeeping – Recording the names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone who buys a stove in the cluster

• An understanding of the supply chain from Stovetec in China, to Kadsol in Lagos and the shipment’s arrival in Pampaida.

• The stoves will be sold in Pampaida for N2500 ($16.67) which is N1000 to N1500 less than the market price in other parts of Nigeria. N2500 was as high as we could go in order to be as close as possible to market prices. This was an attempt at building in some measure of sustainability in the absence of the project’s subsidy. However, this price will be offset with carbon financing to the tune of about $10 per stove. In other sites, the Millennium Villages Project provides this price offset in lieu of carbon financing. We may yet revert to this model if we find that people in Pampaida are not amenable to paying $16.67.

• As an incentive to meet the site team’s goals, commissions for selling stoves will only be shared after every 100 stoves are sold. Awards will be given to the coop member who sells the most stoves every 100 stoves.

• The creation of a payment plan if the coop decides to let people pay in installments.

• Banking, commissions and revolving capital – all money received from stove sales will be deposited into the coop account to be used to order the next shipment of stoves. For starters, the account will be controlled by the MP site team. As the coop develops and stands on its own feet, we will hand control over to them. This money will be used as revolving capital for future stove orders.

Stove Tests: Controlled Cooking Tests began as scheduled on Monday, April 12 in Pampaida. By end of day Monday, April 19, we’d completed tests in 11 households.

Only 10 out of the 30 households surveyed purchase firewood. For those that purchase wood, they spend an average of N55 each day during the four months of the rainy season, which translates to N6600 ($44) per season. With the efficient stoves, they could keep about half of this for themselves.

Energy co-op: With stove testing successfully underway, we met with the Pampaida community heads to discuss the creation of the Energy Cooperative. When asked to nominate trustworthy people with business acumen and sway in the community, people instead wanted to give their experiences with the stoves to reassure us that the stoves indeed were a good idea. It’s almost as if we were just now receiving the community’s approval to introduce the stoves because they could see just how much fuel savings they could expect.

After listening to several commendations of the stoves, we asked the four village axes (Pampaida, Kwari, Saulawa, Fadamar Kale) to separate into smaller groups and nominate two men and two women who would be a part of the Energy business team for a total of 16 people. Local government law governing the creation of cooperatives in Kaduna state allow for the registration of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 people per coop. We wanted gender parity in this endeavor because while most men owned the shops and would be making the purchases on behalf of their wives, it was the women who would be using the stoves and who could best convince other women.

Our criteria for inclusion on the team were:

• A member of the community trusted to handle money and the community’s image
• At least one of the nominees should have completed secondary school and can read and write
• Between 20 and 35 years
• Involved in no more than two other coops or community initiatives
• Demonstrated business-savvy

After 15 minutes of deliberations, each axis submitted four names. Fadamar Kale was the only axis to present the names of two women. Every other axis submitted 3 men and 1 woman making it 5 women out of 16 members. We asked that at least one woman’s name be added to the existing list to increase the ratio to 9 out of 20. However, Fadamar Kale nominated a man instead. The current group now consists of 8 women and 12 men a 40-60 split.

Although we did not achieve the age and gender makeup we’d hoped for, we wanted the community to be at the helm of creating this coop. This week will be spent finalizing membership in the Energy coop and inviting people that the community and gender facilitators feel will be good additions to the team.

Next steps: We will know definitively which stove model to begin ordering by Tuesday, April 27. Depending on how long the cooperative registration process takes, we could begin selling stoves as early as May 10.

With all the stoves distributed last week, we spent this week preparing for the Controlled Cooking Tests that would begin on Monday, April 12. Here are some of the week’s highlights:

• Trained enumerators to perform CCT’s: All four enumerators have been taught to collect and record accurate data. During training, we made some modifications to the data collection and post-survey sheets to improve the questions’ clarity for the benefit of the interviewees.

• Training included visiting the house of one of the test participants to attempt a CCT. During this process, we learned the following about cooking practices in Pampaida:

o      All cooking is done outdoors as long as the weather permits. Some people build walls with windows (see attached photo)around their outdoor kitchens. When it rains, people cook under their eaves or in a room that may or may not be attached to the house and most often has a door and window for ventilation.

o      Many pots lose their legs from normal wear. We saw several pots with one, two, or all three legs missing. People explained that the legs had come off some time ago. So our decision to cut the legs off the pots we use for the test fits with local conditions.

o      One meal consumes an average of 1.5 to 2kg of wood. So a typical household might use up to 6kg of wood per day.

o      The tuwo preferred throughout pampaida is made with guinea corn which is called dawa and not maize as we had thought. Some people still use maize flour. Others reserve it for special occassions. While it’s a preference thing for others.

o      We have decided to use dawa tuwo and beans for the cooking tests. We have purchased a bag each of dawa and beans.

• The enumerators ran a set of mock tests in four households on friday. In the four households tested last Friday, there was a 50-50 split in wood savings between the stovetec and envirofit.
• The potskirts were considered inconvenient and weren’t used at any of the houses we tested.

Compared to the stoves that were covered in soot. This pot skirt was used once and then hung up in the kitchen.

Now that it seems the testing phase has begun successfully, we will spend this week introducing the concept of the Energy Entrepreneurship Coop to the community. In our first meeting, Bala and Abubakar conceived the idea of creating an Energy Coop to handle the sale of stoves, lanterns and any other energy-related products that might be introduced in Pampaida. This coop would comprise 50% women and 50% youths – most of whom would most likely be men. They will be people selected by the community heads, some of them may already own shops or may have displayed a knack for entrepreneurship.

We will be holding our meeting with the community heads either on Tuesday or Wednesday, this week. This initiative will draw on the help of Mr. Lekan, the agribusiness coordinator, Sophi and Abdul, the community facilitators, and Abubakar, the infrastructure coordinator.

With testing kicked off in Pampaida, I plan to begin work in Ikaram next week while I receive updates from the enumerators, all of whom will answer to Abubakar in my absence.

Week ending April 2, 2010

Completed preliminary surveys in 30 households in Pampaida village cluster: Last week, we’d identified 30 households in which to test the stoves. This week, we conducted preliminary stove surveys to understand the participants’ cooking practices. The surveys start with an introduction of who the enumerators are and the rights of the participants as described in the survey’s IRB protocol.

We ask participants which food they cooked most as well as which food takes the longest to cook. These answers provide an insight to what food items will be used for the controlled cooking tests, which will start in two weeks. In Pampaida, Tuwo with soup is the meal most frequently prepared. It is made from guinea corn flour that sets to solid upon being stirred into boiling water. It is soft and doughy.

We also confirmed our assumption that the three-legged pots used throughout the cluster would have to be substituted for pots without legs during the test. Several participants said they were willing to cut the legs off their pots if the stoves indeed saved a significant amount of firewood. We also realized that the fuel being used in the cluster ranged from the dried stalks of maize plants to wood purchased from out-of-town firewood vendors. While we’ve told participants that they may use stalks or actual wood during the two-week testing period prior to the cooking tests, wood will be the only fuel used during testing. Maize stalks are often a byproduct of the harvest season and is not available all year round.

Later in the week, we performed spot checks on 7 households to see if the stoves were being used: After the stoves were distributed, we randomly selected seven households in the cluster to check in with. We wanted to know if the stoves were being used when we weren’t there. We were glad to find that the participants had embraced the use of the stove much faster than we’d expected. The enumerators have been assigned households to visit over the next two weeks as an attempt to encourage continued use of the stove and to listen to any concerns participants may have about using the stoves.

Cooking tests were conducted in randomly selected school kitchens in the Sauri Millennium Villages Project
site, located in Siaya District of Nyanza Province in Western Kenya. The tests compared fuel consumption
measurements obtained using a traditional three-stone fire with those from newly introduced institutional
stoves based on the “rocket” design. The key metric used was Specific Fuel Consumption (SFC), defined as the
weight of firewood consumed in cooking a single batch of food divided by the total weight of food, measured
after cooking. Tests followed the normal cooking practices in the school kitchens and included the typical
range of foods prepared for midday school meals programs. The study included two types of tests: paired
tests, in which most conditions were controlled between one test conducted on a three-stone fire and a
matching test conducted on a “rocket” stove; and unpaired tests, in which conditions were similar, but not
strictly controlled, among two large sets of relatively independent three-stone fire and rocket stove tests.
Results from both paired and unpaired experiments, averaged across all types of food cooked, showed that
the use of rocket stoves yielded significantly lower SFC values without prolonging cooking time when
compared with three-stone fires. An analysis comparing results from paired and unpaired cooking tests
suggests that, due to high variance and sources of bias in unpaired tests, experimental design should favor
paired tests.

Download full paper here: Testing institutional biomass cookstoves in rural Kenyan schools for the Millennium Villages Project

In this post, we take a look at a typical CCT, its importance, and key conclusions we can draw from it.

CCT is an acronym for controlled cooking test. This test allows you to determine how much wood a given stoves consumes per kg of food cooked. It is designed to compare the performance of the improved stove relative to whatever traditional stove this new model will replace.

Before commencing CCTs in any Millennium Village site, we survey 30 households to determine the food cooked most often and the food that consumes the most amount of wood. Some form of starch is typically most often cooked while beans almost always use the most firewood.

Once we’ve determined which foods we’ll be testing, we provide each household with a sample of the improved stove. Participants have two weeks to get comfortable using the stove before we return for the test. On test day:

1. We weigh out the same amount of food for each stove. If testing the 3-stone fire against one manufactured cookstove, say Stovetec, we weigh the typical amount of food normally cooked at a single meal in that household.

2. We weigh a bundle of wood for each stove that will be tested.

3. The cooks prepare the exact same meal, keeping things as identical as possible.

4. After the food is done, we weigh the remaining firewood and determine the amount of wood used by both stoves.

Lesson 2: This test phase of the project is very important because it allows people in the community to see firsthand how much firewood they could be saving by switching to an improved stove.

I left the Modi lab last February and moved home to West Africa to introduce energy efficient firewood stoves in Millennium Village sites. This job is two pronged. The first phase involves comparing the performance of manufactured cookstoves against the traditional 3-stone fire used in most Millennium Villages while the second phase is the creation of a cooperative or association of vendors who will establish a self-sustaining business importing and selling these stoves.

This series of posts will consider lessons learned from my time in Pampaida and Ikaram – both Millennium Villages in Nigeria.

Lesson 1: Community ownership.

The site teams in Pampaida and Ikaram made it abundantly clear from the first day that this project would fail woefully unless we had the backing of both the community heads and opinion leaders within the village. So I spent my first week at each site meeting the community heads, showing them how the stoves work, and giving them a complete idea of what to expect in my three or so months with them. I tell them that we’ll spend about a month conducting cooking tests in 30 households to determine which  manufactured cookstove fits best within the community. Once our tests are completed and we know which stove the community prefers, we form a cooperative to act as the sales team. I explain that besides this being  a business opportunity for members of the community, these stoves will burn cleaner, save people up to 60% of what they spend annually on firewood, and save people time since the wood they collect will last longer while using these stoves.

After this introduction, 30 randomly selected households are presented with two manufactured cookstoves which they test for two weeks. Testers are encouraged to use these stoves daily so that they are comfortable using them when we return to perform Controlled Cooking Tests. This test allows us to determine how much wood each stove uses per kg of food cooked.

The Millennium Village Project has initiated programs to disseminate efficient household energy products and services to the rural  Sub-Saharan African communities. A highlight of these programs have been their focus on building entrepreneurial capacity at the village level to ensure long term sustainability of the program.

This document is an executive summary of two such case flagship projects: Uganda and Malawi.

Read Post: Energy Entrepreneurship – Case Studies