DR Izael Da Silva
12 December 2007
opinion
Ugandan soil is considered among the most fertile in Africa. Everywhere you go, you find different types of green vegetation. Nonetheless, hardly a tree is to be found in populated areas. This comes as no surprise since 93% of the energy needs in our country are sourced from biomass, namely firewood and charcoal.
Pick a district such as Bushenyi and you will see that the situation is very bad. Practically, there are no trees there. The little firewood women manage to gather comes from public forests. Sometimes, it is obtained by stealing from a neighbour in the valley. If they are caught, they are beaten or even humiliated in other ways.
The huge demand for firewood is due to the traditional three-stone stove. This ingenious- or devious - device is inefficient and dangerous but is widely used as many generations have been cooking like that completely unaware of any technological development.
Are there better ways of cooking? Certainly! Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is a clean, safe and efficient fuel but nobody upcountry can afford it. The solution is to keep using the existing resource however scarce and look for more efficient cookers.
The people of GTZ- Energy Advisory Project (EAP) have done impressive research on the technology of Rocket Lorena Stoves. These are improved stoves, designed with combustion chambers to provide almost perfect combustion, meaning that there is hardly any smoke produced. Such a stove can save up to 60% of firewood when compared with the conventional ones.
The good news is that this stove can be manufactured locally. The Rocket Lorena stove may be produced as one of two types: the fixed one for the kitchen- for two pots or saucepans - and the portable one for one saucepan only. One feature of this technology is that the saucepans are inserted into the stove such that the fire may be spread over the bottom and the side of the pan.
In addition to helping households, there are also improved stoves for bakeries, school kitchens and restaurants. These commercial stoves can save up to 80% of firewood. Changing cooking habits is not easy. Offering better technology is not enough. The popularisation of better practices is a slow process.
What GTZ did to achieve this was to follow a pyramid strategy starting at the NGO level. NGO coordinators are trained first, and they in turn organise the training of at least 3 stove builders in each village. These artisans learn not only how to construct the stoves but also how to market them.
Scaling up becomes easier. This project began in 2004 and now, three years down the line, more than 300,000 stoves have been built into household kitchens. This is a very remarkable achievement. No other African country has ever reached such numbers.
To have an idea of the benefits of this project, just consider that each improved stove can save about 1.5 tons of firewood per year.
This means that the Energy-Saving Stoves Project has saved 1,350,000 tons of firewood in these last three years. This is without counting the benefits of the 300 plus institutional ones already built as per October 2007.
The focal point of the project was Bushenyi and Rakai districts but it will continue spreading this marvelous concept to other districts to eventually reach all villages in Uganda.
Makerere University has partnered with GTZ in this venture and at present there is a testing facility at the Faculty of Technology and hopefully to introduce this and similar knowledge into the syllabus of the engineers graduating there. It looks like a simple idea but the impact to the environment can be huge.
The talk in town these days is climate change. The still-more relevant talk is the 8 Millennium Development Goals. The concern of people from North to South, East to West is Global Warming. Please note that all this is related to the idea of helping our people to use more modern types of energy and the latest technology in the field.
Your grandmother may not read this article but you who are reading it now can do something to have an energy saving stove built in her kitchen this Christmas and yet another in your own kitchen in Kampala.
In my case, as a lecturer at Makerere University, I will keep preaching that you can make a difference in your life by using affordable and clean energy.
Dr Izael is specialised in the field of power systems, renewable energies and rural electrification initiatives.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
