Household Electric Cookstoves for Affordable Clean Cooking - Ethiopia

This activity is designing, manufacturing and selling clean and fuel efficient cookstoves for households, businesses and institutions.

Key facts:

This activity sells upwards of 20,000 cookstoves yearly. Electric cookstoves account for about 75% of the sales;
Substituting firewood for electricity saves about from eight to ten kilograms of wood per household per day or over three tonnes of wood per year. This is equivalent to avoidance of 13.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per household per year;
So far, this activity has sold over 65,000 electric cookstoves, avoiding about 870 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide;
This activity provides direct and indirect jobs to about 25 people. They have 12 full-time workers in the manufacturing workshop and about 10 independent product distributors;
Institutions that use the stoves have reported a 70% reduction in fuel use.

The problem

Traditional cooking methods in Ethiopia contribute to a massive deforestation rate. The demand for charcoal and firewood is threatening forest ecosystems and causing waterlogging and erosion.

The solution

This activity manufactures electric cookstoves, firewood and charcoal stoves. Their cookstoves come in different power inputs to meet the various demands of consumers. The stoves are sold primarily through independent distributors who have managed to reach over 50 outlets in Addis Ababa and a few other cities in Ethiopia. The stoves have many environmental and financial benefits.

Helping the planet

Electric cookstoves completely displace charcoal and kerosene use for cooking. Households who have adopted electric cookstoves use charcoal or kerosene only as a backup when the grids is inconsistent or the power goes out. The firewood and charcoal stoves reduce firewood consumption by half.

Helping people

Cooking with electricity is cheaper and brings economic benefits. Since these electric cookstoves are clean and do not use kerosene or biomass, household air pollution, with resulting illnesses discriminately affecting women and children, is completely avoided. In urban areas, the electricity connection rate is over 85%. In Addis Ababa, where this activity’s main market is, the electricity connection rate is over 95%. This means, adopting an electric cookstove improves access to electricity services particularly for cooking. Women also save money on transportation and cooking fuel.

Scaling Up

This activity aims to to double its production capacity in the next couple years and reach annual production and sales of 40,000 for their electric cookstoves. They also plan to widen their distribution network to reach other urban areas in other regions of the country.