Eritrea and Ethiopia

Robert Van Buskirk October 2002

Dear Stove List:

This is an update on the efficient stove activities in Eritrea

East Africa with some reference to activities in Ethiopia.

In Eritrea and Ethiopia, the largest use of household energy

is in cooking the traditional bread injera. And this has been

the focus of activities in both countries.

In Eritrea the efficient stove work is organized by the

Energy Research and Training Center (ERTC) of the Eritrean

Department of Energy. The Eritrean Department of energy

secures funding from a variety of sources and then organizes

trainings and stove building programs in villages around the

country. The stove is in in-built stove with a chimney, a lower

air inlet, that feeds into the bottom of a ceramic grate.

that forms the floor of a round firebox. On top of the

round firebox is a flat cooking plate (about 60 cm in

diameter) on which the injera is cooked. The firebox has a

door that allows one to put the fuel in the firebox.

The activities of the Eritrean stove programs have recently

been picked up by Reuters, see for example:

http://www.ivillagehealth.com/news/child/content/0,13607,412520_536447,00.html

which describes that the Eritrean government is setting the

target of converting all households to the new fuel efficient

stoves. The first village-level pilot tests were in November

1999, and they have expanded to the point where over 5000 households

in 25 villages have been converted and over 200 stove artisans

have been trained. New stoves are being built at the rate of

a few thousand per year. This needs to grow to many tens of

thousandsper year to convert the country to the more efficient

stoves.

In support of these activities, we (the non-profit Eritrean

Technical Exchange Project) have done some studies to

technically support carbon credit funding. Two versions of

these studies are at:

http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/papers/ECEEEPaper6,178C.html

and

http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/papers/EriPaper2C.html

The Eritrean government is pursuing Kyoto Clean Development

Mechanism carbon credit funding as one possible funding path.

Preliminary indications are that there will be some small

successes.

For the Eritrean stoves, the health and comfort benefits

appear to be more important than the fuel savings benefits.

Researchers at the ERTC are constantly revising and refining

the stove design.

I try to keep some studies, reports and updates at:

http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/mogogo/

for your reference. Suggestions on the type of information

that would be useful for stove efficiency folks is welcome.

We have another collaborative visit to Eritrea planned for

this winter.

In Ethiopia, work on the mogogo-type stove is described at:

http://www.esd.co.uk/portfolio/BiomassStove.htm

and additional work on the jiko-type stove is also being

pursued as described at:

http://www.esd.co.uk/portfolio/CharcoalStove.htm

http://www.esd.co.uk/portfolio/PovertyStoves.htm

Ethiopia is taking a private sector approach with much

of the activity concentrated in the capital, Addis Ababa,

while Eritrea is taking a government facilitated approach

with the bulk of the activity occuring in rural villages.

I think it will be interesting for the members of the

stoves list to compare and contrast the Eritrean and

Ethiopian approaches as both of these programs evolve.

Our next initiative at the Eritrea Technical Exchange

will be to provide assistance to the Eritrean Department

of Energy in piloting ultraviolet water disinfection

technology as a complement to its stove promotion work.

See:

http://eetd.lbl.gov/newsletter/cbs_nl/NL9/waterworks.html

for a description of that technology. Our estimate is

that stove work and water disinfection work are complementary

and comparable technology transfer activities for a

national program aimed at raising the village-level

standard of living.

I hope you find this informative and useful.

Sincerely,

Robert Van Buskirk

Injera Cooking Costs

Ron Larson: Bob has kindly forwarded the answer to my question on the injera-cooking

stove costs - saying:

"Re: costs, the design process was done locally under the

constraints of local economics, where local means in

Eritrea. And the initial design which was developed

during the independence war was already a very low

cost design.

Now, about 1/3 of production is in the village and

2/3 consists of materials made outside of the village.

The ERTC constantly searches out those national businesses

that can produce the highest quality materials at lowest

cost. So cost-optimization is integrated into the design

process, it is not a separate step. Given that the cost

constraint (of about $20/stove) is initially satisfied,

design effort can focus on improving quality within the

cost constraint.

Sincerely,

Robert VB"