Sahaya

In Uganda, access to electricity is often limited, which forces the population to use wood as an energy source. In particular, cooking is mostly done on the traditional three-stones-fire, fueled by wood. The burning of this wood is a major cause of indoor air pollution and can result in many respiratory problems and diseases. Further, people easily get burned while using open fires. Lastly, the gathering of wood is time consuming and puts pressures on the vegetation surrounding villages, resulting in environmental problems like GHG emission, soil erosion and deforestation.

The goal of our project is to design fuel-efficient cooking stoves that are cheap and easy to make with local building materials. With these stoves, less wood is needed for cooking, leaving more time for women and children for work and education and in the meantime reducing the pressures on the environment. Moreover, the emission of polluting gasses is reduced, thus improving women’s health. The project is executed in Bwindi, a village at the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southwestern Uganda. We aim to build a couple of the fuel-efficient stoves together with the local people, so they can continue the project themselves.