In response to one of Nigeria's most pressing environmental problems, deforestation, the
Centre for Household Energy and the Environment (CEHEEN), developed an improved version of the traditional egaga wood burning stove.

The improved egaga can be made cheaply and easily from scrap metal and uses half as much fuel as the traditional stove, so providing a much-needed way of cutting wood consumption and reducing pressure on the remaining forests. It is also helping to cut the production of greenhouse gases.

Cooking on a wood fire inevitably means that users suffer from the eye and respiratory diseases caused by smoke. The new egaga produces less smoke than the traditional stove and users have commented on an improvement in their health.

This second phase of the project aimed to increase the manufacture and marketing of the new stoves. The long-term goal is to distribute the stoves throughout Nigeria, selling 17.5 million of them by 2010.

The Ashden Award prize money allowed the project to extend to four more communities in Edo and Delta States, and a total of 4,274 stoves have now been made and sold since the project began in 1997. CEHEEN has also used the Ashden Award money to run training workshops for women on energy efficiency in the kitchen, cultivation of fuel crops alongside food crops, preparation of tree nurseries and stove marketing skills. The award money has helped fund a public awareness campaign, paying for posters and a slot on a talk show on a local TV station in Benin state.