PROJECTS
SEOFS Stove Dissemination in Wakiso District
1. Introduction
Wakiso district is among the newly formed districts that were
created by the act of parliament in November 2001. As can be
seen from the map above, the district encircles Kampala, Uganda’s
capital city. Wakiso is the second-most populated district in
Uganda with a total population of 957,280 people (2002 census).
With such a large population (that is close to 1 million people)
whose major source of energy is biomass, fuelwood scarcity has
inevitably become a serious constraint. This is confirmed by
the fuelwood map above, which brings to light the fact that
Wakiso district is one of the areas with the least fuelwood
stock in tons/capita (0 – 5), indicating that Wakiso has less
than the minimum firewood requirement for its population, implying
that, an average person in Wakiso does not have enough wood
for meeting the daily cooking needs.
Therefore, there is urgent need for all the concerned stakeholders
to address this looming crisis in Wakiso district.
2. SEOFS Intervention
The Sustainable Energy and Organic Farming Systems (SEOFS),
with the support of GTZ through Energy Advisory Projects , is
one of the stakeholders that have undertaken the challenge to
disseminate improved stoves as an endeavor to contribute towards
the alleviation of the fuel wood crisis. At the outset, a pilot
project was assumed that led to the successful dissemination
of 5,062 energy saving stoves in 6 parishes of Nangabo sub-county,
Wakiso district.
The district is divided into two counties (Busiro and Kyadondo),
which are further subdivided into 14 Sub counties, having a
total of 125 parishes .
Applying the same strategy, SEOFS scaled up this stove dissemination
initiative in 8 selected sub-counties of Wakiso district.
These have a total of 101,892 households, of which an estimate
of 61,135 households were to be reached with improved energy
saving stoves at a guesstimate of 60% kitchen coverage and the
number of people who use firewood.
3. Objectives and Outcomes
3.1 THE OVERALL OBJECTIVE
To alleviate the energy poverty and environmental degradation
by facilitating access to improved energy saving stoves.
3.2 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
a) To build capacities in rural communities that will build
at least 61,135 improved stoves in the households of the targeted
sub counties in Wakiso district in a period of Eight (8) months.
b) To create awareness about improved energy conservation methods,
alternative energy sources and factors for fuel wood scarcity.
c) To build hierarchy of social-technicians, trainers, small
and informal entrepreneurs in the sub county right from the
village level with sufficient skills to disseminate the stove
technology
4. Implementation Strategy and
Methodology .
The strategy included sensitization for the local leadership
and the community, mobilization, training of stove builders
and end-users, and general awareness. Furthermore, to boost
the dissemination process, competitions were organized and prizes
awarded.
4.1 SENSITIZATION AND AWARENESS
First and foremost, for any project to succeed, the people
within which it is introduced must be well informed about the
project including it objectives and benefits to that community.
In this respect therefore, the project implementers had to ensure
that Leaders being at the fore front of any development, were
involved right at the start of the project and that people at
all levels were sensitized and made aware of the project . The
unique approach employed by SEOFS was that they never made a
top-down but a down-top approach: they started with the grassroot
leaders and the community. Specifically, the parish councilors
and some Subcounty chiefs and chairmen of Wakiso district were
very instrumental in mobilizing the community to facilitate
the dissemination of improved stoves. Meetings and sensitization
materials, particularly the brochures
were given out.
4.2 TRAINING
The training started and it was organized at the parish level
where all the selected trainees and the interested leaders from
the various villages came together at the parish for training
after which the trainees embarked on training of all households
at village level and construction of stoves in each household
at a small fee.
The training was designed to be more practical i.e. every
trainee was supposed to build a stove on his/her own by the
end of the training. Therefore more time and emphasis was
put on imparting practical skills to the participants.
An 8 day training workshop was successfully carried
out at parish level for village experts. They later set out
to train and disseminate the stoves at household level. A team
of 84 Trainers selected from Nangabo Sub-county were each allocated
a parish to carry out the training for the selected Village
experts. Each trainer had a class with an average of 16 trainees
including a local leader.
The demonstrations were done at the house of the
local leader as an example to encourage all the households to
participate actively in the program. After the demonstrations
then the trainer would split the class into smaller groups every
day until every one was able to construct a stove on his/her
own.
A formal and practical training was done in the
first 3 days and in the subsequent 5 days the trainees were
initiated in the mobilization process, preparation of materials
and then actual construction of stoves.
5. Achievements
A total of 1,260 trainees (Village Experts) were
fully equipped with the skills to mobilize, prepare materials
and construct the Rocket Lorena stove as well as to train others
in the same.
After being trained, the stove artisans continued with the
stove disseminated in the households and they have also trained
other people who were interested thus the number of those who
have the skills in the construction of the Rocket Lorena Stove
are now more than those originally trained.
Through close monitoring and technical support, the trained
stove builders have been able to disseminate a total of 61,234
stoves in all the 8 subcounties thus 60% of the total households
in these 8 Subcounties now use the improved Energy saving Rocket
Lorena stove .Further, even after achieving this target, more
stoves are being built in and outside Wakiso district, although
the specific data is yet to be compiled.
Considering the overall current progress of over
60% of the target as reflected in the table above, the conclusion
is that the planned scaling up by SEOFS has generated one of
the success stories. Captivatingly, not all the Subcounties
are very close to 100%. Specifically, the two biggest Subcounties
in terms of population along with Ssisa (which is an average
sized Subcounty) could not raise the target numbers. On the
other hand, most of the small and average populated Subcounties,
which include Namayumba, Nsangi, Busukuma and Gombe zoomed beyond
the target. Masuulita was nearly just on the target. In a nutshell,
the overall target was achieved not on the basis of the specific
projections per subcounty, but on the summation of the excellent,
the average and the low performing areas, which ended up compensating
for one another.
Fascinatingly , all the Subcounties with targets
less than 5,000 stoves (households) have achieved more than
100%. The most practical reason for this trend is that the Subcounties
with smaller target have smaller populations. These are generally
more rural, hence using firewood as the major source of fuel
for cooking. Therefore, introducing a fuel saving stove made
a lot of sense in such a setting. Their response to the program
and participation was high, resulting into a rapid adoption
of improved stoves.
On the other hand, households with higher high targets are
densely populated and are either urban or semi-urban, using
charcoal as the main fuel for cooking. In this case, the uptake
of firewood stoves was relatively slow. Moreover, there is scarcity
of construction materials in trading centres. Furthermore, urban
people find it difficult to get involved in preparation of materials
for stove construction since this is perceived as tedious and
dirty activity, for they are used to trade, which less laborious
and quite “clean”. Besides, many of these urban households have
nowhere to put the mud stoves, for most of them have no kitchens;
they live in rented houses and cook on the veranda. Since many
of them tend to easily shift from one rented house and occupy
another, traveling with a heavy mass clay stove, even if it
is mobile is not so easy.
However, dissemination of stoves in the urban centres should
not be entirely considered with pessimism. For those households
that have adopted stoves in the urban centre, it is likely to
be more sustainable than for some of the rural counterparts.
This is because the urban community is able to purchase this
stove with much more ease and a better price than the rural.
6. Outstanding Outcomes
The stove dissemination project in Wakiso district is a win-win
undertaking, benefiting all the stakeholders. Many stove builders
have made lots of money from the stove construction business.
One former driver said, “I have abandoned my former tax driving
profession, kept my permit and decided to make better money
from stove business”. Another one, who was formerly a stove
drop out said, “I am an Orphan who had dropped out of school
in senior three, but after participating in the stove business
I pay for my school fees and now I am in senior five.
Over 95% of the households have reported significant savings
in firewood, averaging 50%. The extent of savings depends on
the users’ cooking practice. By saving firewood, a lot of money
for firewood purchase is saved. This makes sense because the
more scarce wood is, the more expensive it becomes. Reliable
sources state that an average family in Wakiso district purchases
wood worth 1,000 Ushs per day. The firewood savings of 50% would
translate into a daily saving of 500 Ushs per family per day,
or 182,500 Ushs per year. The 60,000 stoves built in Wakiso
district save an equivalent of 11 billion Ushs (5.5 million
US dollars).
On top of that, the stove has had outstanding health benefits.
The majority (about 65% of the users) have reported a significant
reduction in kitchen smoke, which causes a death rate of 1.6
million worldwide people per year. Smoke kills by causing diseases
like TB, lung cancer, heart diseases, pneumonia, acute respiratory
infection, asthma and blindness. For pregnant women it can cause
low birth weights and stillbirths. Another important health
benefit has been the reduction in kitchen accidents. Since the
fire is confined in the stove, which is sealed off, the fire
kitchen burns especially for toddlers and other fire accidents
have been significantly reduced or almost eliminated.
The time savings is another important impact of the stove. Time
is saved for firewood collection and cooking. Although for short
time cooking especially tea boiling, the time savings, are not
significant, over 90% of the stove users have reported a substantial
reduction in the time taken to cook the long meals.
The consequence of saving wood is saving of the environment
by reduction in wood used for cooking and the decrease in the
net carbon emissions.
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