Charcoal is both bad and expensive

Since we started Emerging Cooking Solutions, we've always based our work not only on the introduction of clean-stoves, but also on the premise that it is equally important to replace the unsustainably produced charcoal. Our whole endeavour rests on the premise that with enough customers, it makes good business sense to focus on the fuel.

Though not yet at break-even we are getting many indications that our assumptions were correct. Our target group is the people in urban and peri-urban areas who rely entirely on charcoal for their cooking. And what is surprising even to us, is how much they actually spend every month on it. A family that brings home 200 dollars, may easily spend 30 of those on cooking fuel. We are now focusing on selling stoves at a highly subsidised price to these customers. These are people who can't afford the stove at full price, but who will massively benefit financially from being able to switch to fuel-pellets, sold by us at a price that seems to allow them 20-40 per cent in fuel savings. We have also sold subsidised stoves to small restaurants in Lusaka and they are in constant use, for beans and relish. The huge pots used for the staple "Nshima" don't fit on these stoves. Something we'll have to think about how to solve....

Creating the biomass stoves to replace charcoal stoves