Technology

Fuel Efficient Stoves

Region

Africa

Year

2003

Energy Research and Training Centre (ERTC), Eritrea

Fuel efficient stoves

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This project has designed a new stove for the cooking of 'injera', a pancake-like bread that is served with most traditional Eritrean dishes. Injera is made from the fermented batter of Teff flour (an ancient cereal grain) and cooked on a large, flat, black clay cooking plate below a hat-like metal cover. For centuries it has been cooked on simple clay stoves, built over an open fire. These stoves, known as mogogos, are smoky and dangerous and often difficult to start, requiring a lot of blowing, and large amounts of kerosene, to get them going. They are very inefficient and require a lot of woodfuel to complete the cooking process. Given that 50 million people are thought to eat injera every day in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, this inefficiency represents a significant threat to wood sources in these countries.

The Energy Research and Training Centre (ERTC), part of the Eritrean Government's Department of Energy, has designed a new and improved stove that is safer to use. It has an enclosed fireholder, with enhanced ventilation so that the fire burns more efficiently, and a chimney to take smoke out of the house. The stove also burns a wider range of fuels, working well with twigs and leaves and animal dung. Being raised above the floor and, having an enclosed fireholder, the stove is no longer a danger to children.

The main aim of this project is to disseminate the use of this new stove to rural communities throughout the country. ERTC is teaching women how to build the stoves themselves and also paying them to teach other women, who are, in turn, teaching others. Over 10,000 stoves have been installed to date and the users are delighted with the improved quality of life that the stove has brought them.