Present situation

The energy needs for cooking of rural Tanzanian population are mainly fulfilled by using firewood on inefficient (high wood consumption) and unhealthy (indoor smoke production) stoves.

Typical rural houses are full of smoke because most of the women use to cook inside preparing a simple open fire with three stones to support the pot, known as "Mafiga matatu" ("three stone stoves"). These cooking habits have three main negative impacts on:

Health: the indoor smoke produced leads to serious respiratory and eye diseases; woman and children are particularly affected spending long time in the house.

Quality of life: collecting fuel wood requires difficult time-consuming work, primarily done by children and women; this time could be spent on education, awareness or in developing new productive activities.

Environment: the intensive collection of firewood creates deforestation which damages the environment on which people heavily rely.

The same problem unfortunately exists even in most of the schools, which have not kitchens and are occasionally cooking on open fires.

Best Ray strategy

1. Differentiation of technologies for households

• Mud stove: a minimum cost stove as a self-construction technology, using local available products, mainly mud, to reach lowest population layers. It contributes to reduce the smoke production and use of wood, thus improving health level in the smoky households.
• Portable efficient stoves: closed small stoves, still low cost, which significantly reduce the use of wood but not the smoke production (they should be used outside the houses). There are different types made by cement, clay or iron. The cement stove can be connected to a small water tank to warm up water and it is produced by local women cooperatives, trained by Best Ray.
• Efficient and smokeless stoves: more advanced stoves of higher efficiency (about 50% of firewood needed, compared to the 3 stones stoves!) which totally remove the smoke. They are made by bricks, cement and a chimney to send out the smoke. The "jiko janja" model ("Clever stove") is the most efficient and the pot is inserted directed inside the chamber. The cheaper "jiko la plati" model ("plate stove") is smaller, thus uses less bricks, and has an iron plate at the top where to place different size of pots. It is a bit less efficient than the Janja model but still smokeless. These models are introduced to reach better-off people and they are built by women cooperative trained by Best Ray.
• Now, at the CERCs, local people can have information and services on those different kinds of improved energy stoves.

2. Creating local skills and awarness

Best Ray has trained 15 woman from local cooperatives to build Jiko Janja stoves and the practical session consisted of stove construction in CERCs, the Mkuru Training Camp and in the houses of the trained women that are members of the cooperatives, to serve also as demonstration for the community. 9 cooperatives managed to reach satisfying quality standards and they are now teaching to other cooperative members and starting building smokeless stoves private households. The market for smokeless stove has been created thanks to the Best Ray incentives and the itinerant campaign, where about 500 orders have been collected! The project will guarantee and support the construction of 200 domestic stoves.

3. Improving school service

On February 2010 Best Ray has conducted training for 6 local masons on the construction of big improved energy stoves, called "Jiko Okoa", to be implemented in schools. The Jiko Okoa has the same basic design as the Jiko Janja but bigger and with three burners for different pot sizes (usually 200 l, 150 l and 50 l) in order to satisfy the large number of students (500 on average).

During the training the project has already built stoves in three local primary schools (Momella, Ngarenanyuki and Olkunguado). Best Ray is cooperating with other projects/organizations for the construction the kitchens in the schools where they are missing, in order to be able to provide improved stoves even for these institutions;