Background

More than 95% of Ugandans rely on fuel wood for cooking, typically charcoal or wood for urban dwellers and wood for rural households. The current stoves used for cooking have low efficiency and this increases the amount of fuel wood needed to prepare a meal. Greenhouse gas emissions are released into the atmosphere during fuel wood burning, as well as the release of particulate particles during cooking leading to indoor air pollution. UN studies show that worldwide indoor air pollution from cooking stoves causes around 1.5 million premature deaths each year and also causes debilitating illness for tens of millions more.

The project

The Uganda Stoves Project supplies efficient wood burning stoves to families and institutions in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and subsequently through out the country. The project involves dissemination of two types of fuel-efficient stoves which have high efficiencies:

1) Improved fuel-efficient residential wood stoves
2) Improved fuel-efficient institutional wood stoves

A project is also being run in Uganda to disseminate efficient charcoal burning stoves on behalf of a business client. The project will transform the market by improving awareness amongst the population, establishing business capacity to manufacture and market the stoves, creating jobs in retail and after-sales service, and establishing quality assurance procedures which include careful monitoring of the usage and effectiveness of the new stoves. The project aims to install 20,000 stoves per year in the initial years, with the intention of increasing the sales figures in later years. Each stove will have an average lifespan of 3 years.

Other benefits

Social benefits

• Increased family incomes due to reduced expenditure on woodfuel.
• Less kitchen smoke and consequently improved health.

Environmental benefits

• Reduced deforestation in Uganda, in areas affected by the Kampala market.

Economic benefits

• Improved local technological and business capability, building a better economic base for the country.
• New employment opportunities in an improved stove market.
• A solid step toward fuel self-sufficiency for the country as efficient stove production stimulates sustainable wood supply

Quotations from local people:

Grace Grace is a local resident who lives a few streets away from the factory. She, alongside most of the people in her neighbourhood, uses an improved charcoal cook stove for preparing family meals such as the local staple of matoke (green bananas). On asking her what she thought of the stove, she replied; “I feel happy with it. It functions well and lasts a lot longer than the traditional stove that I used previously. It saves my family money on charcoal and I would not want to change back to using the old stove that I once used.”

Kiwa

Kiwa is the Inventory Manager at Uganda Stove Manufacturers Ltd, where the efficient stoves are made. He lives locally to the factory in the surrounding area of high density housing. Kiwa explains how he enjoys his job controlling the movements of stock in and out of the factory, especially when orders are made for large quantities of cooking stoves. He explains how the factory has brought a good deal of employment to the area;

“the people living in this area of Kampala are very poor. The stove factory has brought a lot of employment to the area and now employs 56 people, mostly residents of the local parish.”

David Mukisa

David heads up the Uganda Improved Cooking project in Kampala explained how carbon finance through the voluntary market has helped the project;

“I think that this project is a really good example of a success story of the voluntary carbon market mechanism. In the first year of our improved cooking stove project here in Kampala we did not have access to carbon finance and the business model proved to be unsustainable, with just 3,000 stoves sold in the first 9 months. We began to look elsewhere for additional finance and were disappointed to find that we could not tap into the compliance market because the cooking stove technologies were not recognised. Through the voluntary market we were able to access the finance to tip the project so that it became viable. The carbon finance has allowed us to spend money on training staff, marketing and sales and credit facilities. This has meant that we are able to reach out to more customers and offer them an affordable product through the provision of micro-finance. We are now selling about 100 stoves a day and over 2007, we expect to generate over 20,000t of CO₂ offsets.”

“I don’t believe that Uganda is set up to benefit from the compliance carbon market at the moment. There is a lack of knowledge here in regards to carbon finance and I believe the CDM systems are too complex when coupled with the complications of bureaucracy in the country. Our projects desperately need extra funding in the shortest possible time to get them off the ground. I see the voluntary market as being able to help us whilst still providing rigorous standards for our projects to meet."