boiling point 58

Theme

MarketingShell Foundation’s shift from social to commercial marketing – p2 Putting stove marketing techniques to the test – p13 entrepreneurship for ‘Lighting Africa’ – p6 SolarAid’s marketing through micro-franchising – p20plus carbon financing in Sudan, financing micro-hydro schemes and more…

issue 58 — 2010 £5

A prActitioner’s journAl on household energy, stoves And poverty reduction

A publication of the

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Boiling Point is a practitioner’s journal for those working with household energy and stoves. It deals with technical, social, financial and environmental issues and aims to improve the quality of life for poor communities living in the developing world.

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To the latest edition of Boiling Point. We strive to make the journal as accessible and participative as possible, and welcome any comments or suggestions by email or post. Please see the inside back page of this issue for details of how to contribute papers to future issues. Boiling Point is published by the HEDON Household Energy Network (www.HEDON.info). The journal is produced by Eco Ltd, and has an Editorial Team including the major sponsors for each issue.

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Thalia Konaris, Grant Ballard-Tremeer (Eco Ltd), Lisa Feldmann (GTZ), Lucy Stevens (Practical Action)

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Marlis Kees (GTZ), Simon Bishop and Pradeep Pursnani (Shell Foundation), Liz Bates

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ContentsThemeEditorial: Marketing 1

Marketing lessons from the Room to Breathe Campaign 2 Simon Bishop et al

Innovative marketing and business models for the rapid development of off-grid lighting markets in Africa 6 Patrick Avato and Lindsay Madiera

The preferred stove for the preferred woman: The Roumdé story in Burkina Faso 9 Andrea Reikat

A distribution and marketing strategy of the Stovetec Stove 13 Robert Aitken et al

Viewpoints Interview with Abser Kamal, Acting Managing Director of Grameen Shakti 18

Interview with Nick Sireau, founding Executive Director of SolarAid 20

Interview with Ron Bills, Chairman and CEO of Envirofit 22

ToolkitMarketing extract from The Cooking Energy Compendium 24 GTZ HERA

GTZ NewsLatest news from GTZ Editor: Lisa Feldmann 26

Practical Actions NewsLatest news from Practical Action Editor: Lucy Stevens 28

HelplineMarketing dilemma with expert response from Pradeep Pursnani 32

General The Off Fire Reboiling pot: Improvement to cooking pot design contributes to eco-protection 30 Zhiliang Wan

Energy consumption in the residential sector in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan 34 Debajit Palit and Shirish Garud

Using carbon finance to introduce liquefied petroleum gas stoves into Northern Darfur, Sudan 37 Hashim Eltayeb

Financial and ownership models for micro-hydro schemes in Southern Africa 40 Chandirekera Sarah Mutubuki-Makuyana

Gender and the rocket mud stove: GTZ PREEEP’s experience 43 Philippe Simonis et al

Call for papersBoiling Point forthcoming themes 45

Design by Dean Ford Creativity Ltd. +44 (0) 20 7000 1055 www.deanfordcreativity.com

Cover photo: Promoters from the Shell Foundation’s ‘Room To Breathe’ Indoor Air Pollution awareness-raising campaign promote Improved Cookstoves in Shimoga District in the southern Indian State of Karnataka. Shell Foundation.

issn 0263-3167 (print)issn 1757-0689 (online)

Boiling Point. issue 58 — 2010

EDITORIAL

1

Despite rising interest in marketing, based on the Boiling Point readers survey on marketing practices carried out in April this year, in a staggering 20% of your

organisations, marketing is not represented at all. In other organisations, irrespective of sector, marketing is expressed predominantly through awareness raising and fundraising activities rather than as an activity in its own right. The most popular marketing tools include demonstrations, workshops and posters. And the greatest marketing challenges faced by your organisations include lack of awareness of your products by potential customers (52.6%), a charitable image which makes commercial approaches difficult (39.5%), low education levels of customers (39.5%), lack of marketing skills (31.7%), remoteness of customers and lack of access to media (31.7%) and providing quality products affordably (28.9%). In this issue we give you inspirational ideas to address many of these challenges and examples and tools you can adapt to your needs. Great examples include the work of GTZ with the Roumdé stove in Burkina Faso (page 9) and the work of various small enterprises

supported by IFC’s ‘Lighting Africa’ programme (page 6). As the Shell Foundation describes in their article (page 2), they also adopted a commercial, ‘tourist-board’ approach to market improved stoves, following a health awareness campaign that resulted in very few stove sales. As SolarAid, Grameen Shakti and Envirofit describe in their interviews (pages 18-23), commercialisation happens first through rigorous promotion to build demand for the product and development of distribution channels and only then through local manufacture. The article by Restio Energy (page 13) usefully compares various marketing techniques in terms of the investment they require and their contribution to sales numbers.

We hope you enjoy this issue on Marketing and that it sheds light on how other organisations, facing similar challenges to yours, are finding ways to deal with them.

Please give us your feedback on this issue and what you would like to see in future issues at [email protected]

Best regards, The Editorial team

Editorialissue 58

Marketing

Organisations of all kinds are increasingly using the techniques and language of business to increase the effectiveness of their efforts. ‘Marketing’ is one of these techniques. Whether you are offering products or services, stoves, consulting, education or advocacy, marketing what you do is becoming increasingly common.

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ThemeAuthors Simon Bishop Jeroen Blum Pradeep Pursnani Anuradha Bhavnani

shell international Ltd, shell Centre, LONDON, se1 7NA, uK

email: [email protected]

For the last 18 months the Shell Foundation has been developing what it calls its ‘Room to Breathe’ indoor air pollution awareness-raising campaign. The campaign aims to save lives, improve livelihoods and reduce climate change emissions through the active promotion – using Social Marketing – of methods that reduce indoor air pollution. It focuses on promoting ‘improved cookstoves’ as ‘the’ internationally-recognised most effective method for tackling indoor air pollution. This article describes the growth of the campaign in India as a key tool within the wider tool-box that makes up the Foundation’s efforts to tackle indoor air pollution.

Marketing lessons from the Room to Breathe Campaign

Figure 1: An example of a poster from the Room to Breathe campaign expansion, Oct 2009 onwards, which focuses on messaging designed to convince people to buy an improved cookstove

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 5 March 2010Accepted 27 April 2010

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For the last 18 months the Shell Foundation has been developing what it calls its ‘Room to Breathe’

Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) awareness-raising campaign.

This aims to save lives, improve livelihoods and reduce climate change emissions through the active promotion - using Social Marketing - of methods that reduce IAP.

It runs on three levels: Local and National (currently in India but with the potential to expand elsewhere) – and Global.

On the Local level, it promotes Improved Cookstoves (ICS) to IAP-affected households in parts of southern India. These ICS are currently produced by three organisations – Envirofit, First Energy and SELCO – though there is the potential to work with others.

The ‘Four A’s’ The Breathing Space team, which is responsible for the Shell Foundation’s IAP work, categorise the many challenges faced by those trying to tackle IAP as the ‘Four A’s’:— Awareness: This low awareness stretches

from IAP-affected households to the corridors of power in the international community.

— Affordability: Lack of ability by IAP-affected households to afford ICS - ‘the’ internationally-recognised most effective method for tackling IAP - is also a major hurdle.

— Availability: Lack of access to high quality, durable ICS (with somewhere convenient to go if they need repairing) that fulfil user-needs and desires around fuel use, convenience, cooking times, smoke-levels, taste of food and other issues, is also a big challenge.

— Accountability: Attempts to tackle these challenges are further hampered by a lack of recognised industry benchmarks defining what an ICS is, poor monitoring and evaluation capacity and insufficient rigorous evidence of the impact of IAP on both health and the environment.

This article describes the growth of the Room to Breathe campaign as a key

‘Social Marketing’ tool within the wider tool-box that makes up the Foundation’s efforts to tackle IAP. It is a tool that was developed with a clear eye on tackling the first ‘A’ – Awareness, but has expanded to help tackle the other three ‘A’s’ too.

The need for awareness-raising

Before launching any awareness-raising campaigns we commissioned an independent survey of more than 1200 IAP-affected households across five of 29 districts in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (population estimated at 60 million, equivalent to Britain’s), to assess existing knowledge, attitudes and practices.

The interviews were conducted roughly 90% in rural and 10% in urban areas, split equal between men and women. Most came from poor or medium income households with the average monthly income being 3,000 Indian Rupees (US$60). Good quality ICS in India cost around US$10-US$60.Key findings included:— 80% use wood for cooking— When asked if they thought smoky

kitchens could cause health problems, 86% said ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’. But when prompted with a list of illnesses people focused on the obvious: headache (50%), breathing-related (46%), cataract (56%). They failed to link IAP to more severe health impacts: lung cancer (20%), low birth weight (24%), death (16%).

— Only 10% of respondents identified ICS as a method for tackling IAP (despite it being ‘the’ internationally-recognised most effective solution).

— Even when prompted with a list of methods, only 20% ranked ICS in their top three solutions, with ‘use a chimney’ and ‘change to LPG’ ranking higher.

— 80% of respondents said they were willing to consider buying an ICS for US$16, 30% said they would consider buying an ICS for US$30.

Health miscalculation

From November 2008 to February 2009 we ran a trial campaign in parts of Karnataka with a view of establishing the most effective way to reach IAP-affected households.

Our messaging was almost exclusively around health. ‘Khidki Amma – the village gossip’ spread the word about IAP and five ways to tackle it: — Dry wood before burning it— Keep children away from fire — Use a chimney— Open the window — Use an ICSIt also used the catchphrase ‘My kitchen, my pride’ to emphasise the cleaner kitchen that would result from using an ICS instead of a traditional stove. We trialled a variety of mediums:— Van campaigns – vans touring villages

and conducting street theatre, games and other educational activities;

— Static – posters and wall paintings;— Broadcast – we ran a range of TV and

radio adverts (though note this was on local cable TV and radio stations not state-wide or national channels).

Key conclusions (from a post-trial survey):— Physical demonstrations of ICS by both

the man and woman in the house are required; they want to ‘touch and feel’ this new-fangled piece of technology. TV and radio adverts alone are not enough;

— The campaign was good at raising awareness about health impacts (from 43% to 69%) but negative health messaging is not enough to convince people to adopt ICS (83% said they would buy but only 2% bought).

3Boiling Point. issue 58 — 2010

Figure 2: The Room to Breathe campaign logo

Figure 3: The back cover of a leaflet promoting iCs. in the same way a Tourist Board promotes hotels using a star rating but never subjectively promotes one hotel over another (‘this one is better than that one’), the Room to Breathe campaign promotes several iCs partners whose stoves pass certain minimum standards

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Current campaign expansion

In October 2009, the Room to Breathe Local campaign, using the lessons learnt from the trials, began a sizeable expansion that is still underway.

Stove is KingAs a result of the trials we radically shifted our messaging – from health to anything that would convince people to buy an ICS. We did this because with a lifespan of up to five years an ICS bought and used regularly can lead to the significant and sustainable IAP reduction we are looking for.

In contrast, evidence showed health messaging did not convince people to buy. While the impact from convincing them to adopt other ‘free’ behavioural shifts, such as ‘drying wood before burning it’, can be limited because it is much easier for people to revert to their old habits.

Triggers and barriers to purchaseThe campaign drew on a wide number of surveys and market research to hone in on the key triggers and barriers to ICS adoption – and subsequently to match these to our campaign messaging (to maximise impact). Here are just a few key findings:— Depending on the survey, between

62% and 94% of respondents said ICS purchase was a joint decision between man and wife;

— Altogether, 65% of respondents said ICS were too expensive, while 48% said they needed payment options (like instalments);

— Crucially, the hierarchy of triggers were very different for women and men

Barriers tended to be less gender specific. These included: ‘claims don’t seem credible’, ‘too expensive’ (exacerbated by seasonal fluctuations in income), ‘fear of the unknown’ – and ‘suspicion about availability’ (where could they get one and could they take it back if they have problems).

Our campaign messaging was thus honed to reflect this hierarchy of triggers and barriers. They were also tailored to men and women.

Acting like a Tourist Board

Room to Breathe currently promotes ICS sold by three different organisations: Envirofit, SELOC and First Energy.

In the same way a Tourist Board promotes hotels using a Star rating but never subjectively promotes one hotel over another (i.e. never says ‘we think this one is better than that one’), the campaign promotes these partners’ stoves equally.

Rather than a hotel-style five star rating, it just has one rating called the ‘Blue House – Symbol of Trust’ which is part of the overall campaign logo.

To qualify for participation in the campaign, ICS must, when compared to a three-stone fire in laboratory tests:— Reduce fuel use by at least 40%— Reduce emissions by at least 55%— Come with a minimum one-year

guarantee.Futhermore, ICS partners must deliver

stoves to customers in a timely manner

(following an order) and must provide a local aftercare service. They are also required to report sales figures regularly to the Foundation.

This approach allows the campaign to catalyse several key players in the infant commercial ICS market in India – and offer consumer choice. In some areas (where all three partners operate) we will promote all six stoves (two per partner). In other areas we may only promote one or two partners.

Getting the message to market As important as the message hierarchy is the medium for reaching the audience. Using lessons learnt from the trials – and other Social Marketing best practice – we devised a two-pronged strategy:1. Focus on one District – we selected

one District, Shimoga, estimated population 1.5 million, in Karnataka and are currently undertaking a blitz of communications activities

Figure 4: A poster from shell Foundation’s awareness-raising campaign trial, November 2008 to February 2009, which took place in parts of the southern indian state of Karnataka – and focused on health messaging

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designed to convince the population to adopt ICS. A secondary objective is to create a ‘demonstrator effect’, illustrating how such a blitz could be replicated in other parts of India – and hopefully attracting others to the table. For example, the Chief Minister of Karnataka has enthusiastically endorsed the campaign – and says he is willing to adopt targets for 15% of households in some other Districts across the State adopting low or non-smoke cooking technologies.

Activities in Shimoga include van campaigns, touring every village and town with a population of 2000 upwards (110 in total) and conducting extensive awareness-raising activities, focused around demonstrating ICS. We also employ one woman per 2000-5000 population towns. She goes door-to-door to 15 houses-a-day, raising awareness about IAP and inviting people to stove demonstrations.

2. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) – to keep the campaign cost per ICS-sale to a minimum and simultaneously address the Affordability ‘A’ we are looking to partner with 4-5 medium-sized MFIs in southern India. Many MFIs are now willing to consider loans for products like ICS that improve the lives of their customers – and see such loan offerings as a way to differentiate themselves from competitors. The MFIs will provide access to their membership and a loan product for ICS. We will provide campaign literature and a dedicated stove promotion team, who will over several months work through each MFIs membership, conducting stove demonstrations to as much of the membership (and the members husbands) as is feasible. As of March 2010, we had gone live with Grameen Koota, a Karnataka-based MFI with a membership of 350,000, and we are close to signing partnerships with 2-3 other MFIs.

Conclusion: The jury is out!

On a local level, Room to Breathe has firmly launched. On national and global levels there are two areas where the Room to Breathe campaign is making a difference. The first, is the expansion of the current India-based local campaign to IAP-affected households in other countries, of course allowing for different local cultural characteristics. The second, is to target national and global key opinion leaders through niche advocacy campaigns with the aim of attracting more interest and resources (both financial and non-financial) to the IAP sector as a whole. We are, for example, currently in talks with the Indian government about how we can better work together – and we are partnering with the United Nations Foundations and other key players in the IAP world to create a Global Alliance on ICS. Watch this space for more developments! In the meantime we hope you will join the Room to Breathe campaign.

Profile of the authors

simon Bishop is Head of Policy and Communications for the Foundation and is also responsible for the Room to Breathe campaign.

Jeroen Blum is the shell Foundation’s Netherlands-based Deputy Director. He also oversees the Breathing space programme.

Pradeep Pursnani is the Business Director for the Breathing space Programme. He joined the Foundation after spending three years in strategy and Portfolio for shell Group.

Anuradha Bhavnani is the Foundation’s Regional Business Director for india. Based in Delhi, she covers the whole spectrum of Foundation activities in india.

Figure 5: The inside of a Room to Breathe information leaflet. Messaging is targeted at men and women and is tightly aligned to surveys and market research that identified the hierarchy of triggers and barriers to purchase

Hierarchy of triggers to ICS purchase

Women Men

1. Less coughing and sore eyes – from less smoke

6. Money saved - on buying less fuel or on medicine because the family will fall ill less often

2. Cleaner kitchen and utensils – again from less smoke

7. Time saved – from having to collect less wood

3. Time saved – from collecting less wood

8. Taste – the food retains its smoky-flavour

4. Healthier children – again less smoke

9. Portability and durability of ICS

5. Still a happy husband – as the food is still tasty

10.Cheaper than LPG and the fuel is always available (Note: we do not emphasise this in the campaign as we do not want people using LPG less and ICS more as this would actually increase IAP).

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Authors Patrick Avato1, Lindsay Madeira2

1email: [email protected] 2email: [email protected]

Office: F 3K-333; MsN: F 3K-309; 2121 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20433,

Figure 1: Children studying at night using an LeD lantern (Photo: Lighting Africa)

Innovative marketing and business models for the rapid development of off-grid lighting markets in Africa

Transforming markets for off-grid lighting: The Lighting Africa Programme

Improving lives through lighting and improved energy access

Lighting Africa, a joint World Bank-International Finance Corporation (IFC) programme, is supporting

the private sector to build and grow new markets for off-grid lighting in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is based on the hypothesis that a commercial consumer products market can be developed for superior modern lighting products, with the potential to displace the kerosene market. The kerosene market is a widespread and formal commercial market that poses

significant environmental, social, and economic burdens. Through the provision of targeted activities designed to overcome market barriers and facilitate market entry on behalf of industry interest, Lighting Africa is addressing the gaps across the supply chain. With the ultimate programme objective: to facilitate access to modern off-grid lighting options which offer superior quality and safety, at affordable prices, for Base of the Pyramid (BOP) consumers across the continent.

Providing the lighting industry with new growth opportunity in the emerging off-grid lighting sector

Across Africa, the kerosene industry has acquired a lion’s share of the market - valued at nearly US$17b (Lighting Africa

2010) - largely without much competition from other industry sectors. Significant market barriers prevent the lighting industry from being able to develop the off-grid lighting market. Lighting Africa’s activities therefore target market barriers undermining the commercial uptake of advanced off-grid lighting technologies, as shown in Table 1.

In turn, this serves to reduce transaction costs and mitigate market risk, support commercial discipline, build capacity, and fill gaps across the value chain, establishing a neutral platform for opening markets to innovation and efficient product deployment.

The programme is supported by an interactive web portal, home to approximately 2500 members who share market information and business leads.

Over the past decade, technological breakthroughs have enabled the rapid development of new consumer product markets, making advanced technologies such as mobile phone devices and off-grid lighting available to millions of low-income earners around the world. The size of the business opportunity for off-grid lighting promises to be substantial. This article highlights some of the key underlying market barriers and trends and highlights some of the innovative marketing and business models paving the way for the successful uptake of emerging off-grid lighting markets in Africa and beyond.

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 07 March 2010Accepted 30 April 2010

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Business innovation: A driving market forceIn order to take hold of this ripe opportunity and tap into this new market area, a growing number of international and Africa-based off-grid lighting companies are using a mix of technological and marketing innovations to customise products to meet end-user demand. As a result of the low power requirements of new lighting technologies integrating Lighting Emitting Diodes (LEDs), and applying BOP business models pioneered by the consumer goods industry, the off-grid lighting market is now beginning to market smaller and simpler lighting systems, adapted to the purchasing power and preferences of low-income consumers.

Innovative financing and business models for market development

The role of Microfinance Institutions

Most low-income consumers are able to pay approximately US$10-30 per unit (even though there are significant market niches for higher priced products) and consumers appear to increase their willingness to pay once they become more familiar with modern products (Lighting Africa 2010). Most consumers spend the equivalent amount or more on kerosene for wick lamps over a period of one or two months and users of off-grid lighting can pay 150 times more per unit of useful lighting service than grid-connected people (Mills & Jacobson 2008). This is because consumers are very often reluctant or unable to make such a one-time

investment up front, due both to the nature of their available cash flows as well as to the real and perceived risks of investing in a potentially sub-standard product.

Microfinance provides a means to overcome these limitations – provided that the high transaction costs for loans of this small size can be remedied. A range of relevant consumer finance models through Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) as well as less formal savings and credit unions and similar institutions are under development – for example by organisations like Arc Finance in Ghana and Microenergy International in Tanzania.

Of particular interest as the market unfolds will be the evolution of the roles of both formal and informal MFIs in unlocking sizable market demand by overcoming considerable transaction costs associated with microloans. Numerous MFIs in Africa hold the capacity to mobilise considerable finances, should the opportunity arrise. The lighting and other relevant industries such as the mobile phone industry are also helping MFIs manage the risks of non-payment, for example, by pushing consumers to pay by locking lighting systems until fees are paid (as the Solar Energy Foundation is doing in Ethiopia) or by pioneering pay-as-you-go schemes using mobile banking. Lighting Africa is exploring complementary innovative microfinance options as well, for instance, via its collaboration with Unilever Tea in Kenya Ltd, by supporting the company’s Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) to sell quality lighting products to their workers (who live without electricity) with loan repayments deducted from salaries. Lighting Africa will explore similar partnerships with other companies

such as plantations and mining companies that can act as off-grid lighting product aggregators, reaching large numbers of people with improved energy access through company communities and their family and friend networks (e.g. mining companies, agribusiness etc).

Direct marketing models Innovative marketing strategies are also unfolding across Africa. For example, direct marketing models are becoming increasingly popular, demonstrating promise to gain substantial consumer confidence while, at the same time, evading high distribution costs incurred while trying to establish complex networks to channel products to often remote locations. One model taking root is that of using the community hierarchy to establish consumer confidence in the community by enlisting community leaders as direct sales agents, who sell products directly in the community making a commission on each sale. For example, this model is presently being rolled out by the company Greenlight Planet in India. SolarAid in Kenya is using a similar marketing approach, whereby a community roadshow party is sponsored by the lighting company, in which it is announced that a competition will take place for community members to see who can get the most endorsement as the ‘community vendor’. The one with the most signatures receives the opportunity to supply the off-grid lighting products to the community members, under the assumption that this ‘competition’ will select a particularly credible, sociable and persuasive community member.

Modular pay-as-you-go finance structures

This model enables consumers a modular approach to pay for each component or product within their budgetary limits, and slowly build and expand their lighting system when they can afford to, following a kind of Lego building approach. Companies like Sun Transfer, a German company, and Zara Solar in Tanzania, are employing this model, allowing consumers to purchase a broad offering of add-ons to their lanterns

Market barrier Lighting Africa Programme response

High transaction costs to understand the market•Lack of understanding of consumer needs/•preferences, size of market opportunityLack of access to partners and understanding of •playing field, distribution channelsLack of proven business models and marketing •strategies

Market intelligence•Business support services•

Buyer inability to make informed purchasing •decisions and decipher quality in the marketLack of understanding of the comparative •advantages of off-grid lighting to fuel-based lighting

Consumer education•

Lack of product quality in the marketplace•Lack of testing facilities, manufacturing standards•High risk for buyer dissatisfaction and market •spoilageLack of local capacity to test products, develop/•maintain product standards

Product quality assurance•

Lack of access to available consumer, trade, •finance, seed capital

Access to finance•

Policy and regulatory impediments preventing •entry and in-country support of off-grid lighting

Policy and public sector operations•

Table 1: The Lighting Africa Programme’s approach to addressing various barriers to the growth of the off-grid lighting market

Figure 2: Painting of girls studying at night under an LeD-based lamp (Photo: Guy Patrick Massoloka)

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and solar home systems, gradually building larger lighting systems as well as adding mobile phone chargers, TVs, fans, and other prized household items.

Fee-for-charge models

Some companies are offering consumers who purchase a light without its own charging mechanism to pay a fee each time a charge is needed, thus saving on upfront costs of purchasing a solar panel or other off-grid charging device. The German lighting giant OSRAM, for example, through its O-HUB model is investing in central charging stations, employing the model whereby lights are sold separately from the power source and recharged against a fee in central charging stations. This model not only allows them to reduce the cost of the lamps, exploit economies of scale, and create a continuous revenue stream by charging fees but, additionally, to be able to offer other kinds of services which leverage the charging infrastructure, such as water filtration or mobile phone charging. A similar model is also being pursued by Thrive of India.

Innovative distribution models

The distribution models for Omo detergent soap and kerosene (two popular consumer goods that are found even in the most remote African villages) demonstrate that functional commercial distribution channels are filling consumer need (IFC Lighting Africa 2009). Interest exists on the part of many of these distribution channels to also stock off-grid lighting products in addition to their other goods and receive the benefit of expanding production by actually using some of the products to illuminate their vending kiosks. Informal distribution channels are also demonstrating the potential to play a significant role in off-grid lighting delivery, with increasing interest on the part of trading networks, kerosene suppliers, company employee living communities, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), farmers’ asso-ciations, microfinance institutions, and other informal distribution aggregators which can make earnings from off-grid lighting retail while improving their

bottom line by using the lighting products themselves and improving their businesses by providing access to electricity to their employees, community members, or the disadvantaged groups they support.

Effective marketing: Tapping the aspiration value of lighting through innovative design and branding

We expect that off-grid lighting companies will seek to emulate the successful business models of mobile phones in Africa, for example by marketing their products as lifestyle accessories which harbour considerable aspirational value for consumers. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including stylish product designs such as Greenlight Planet’s sleek solar LED task lamp and SolarAid’s LED-lighting product that imitates the look of a grid-connected incandescent light bulb, innovative product integration (e.g. lights which also have radio and mobile phone charging options), or through aggressive marketing approaches and unique branding strategies around them.

The emerging market for off-grid lighting in AfricaAs a result of its unique hand in market development, through its unique programme interventions in finance and business facilitation, policy, market intelligence, quality assurance and consumer education, entrepreneurs are increasingly turning to Lighting Africa for collaboration and guidance to accelerate their market penetration. International manufacturers of off-grid lighting are using the programme’s market intelligence and business support materials and online social networking opportunities to identify business partners, determine avenues to access needed finance, and to solicit advice to develop and roll out their business plans. Manufacturers and distributors are collaborating with Lighting Africa to strengthen their business activities, secure business partners, and expand their market reach. Lighting Africa’s product quality assurance programme is supporting buyers and end-users in making informed purchasing decisions and supporting

companies in product development, mitigating risk of market spoilage. Potential investors and financiers are realising the sizable market opportunity and looking for early investment opportunities. Consumers are starting to gain confidence in the power of modern lighting to improve opportunities and their quality of life. And the market is delivering, with the number of products specifically tailored to this market growing from about 8 in 2008 to 71 today.

References ieA, 2002. World energy Outlook. international energy Agency.

iFC, Lighting Africa, 2009. Value Chain and Distribution Channel Report – Kenya & Ghana.

Lighting Africa, 2010. The Off-Grid Lighting Market in sub-saharan Africa. Market Research synthesis Report, The World Bank Group (WBG).

Mills, e., & Jacobson, A. 2008. The Need for independent Quality and Performance Testing of emerging Off-Grid White-LeD illumination systems for Developing Countries. Light and engineering, 5-24.

Profile of the author Lindsay Madeira is an iFC Consultant who supports the Lighting Africa program in various roles. she has also worked as the Manager of sustainability Programs for American university.

Patrick Avato is Global sustainable energy specialist at iFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. He manages a portfolio of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, with a particular focus on off-grid renewables.

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Figure 3: Various LeD-based off-grid lighting products available in Africa markets today (Photo: Hsu)

Figure 4: Lady selling tomatoes late at night (Photo: Lighting Africa)

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Burkina Faso is a landlocked Sahelian country in West Africa. Its population is estimated at 13.31

million inhabitants according to the 2006 population census. It is among the very poorest in the world. 85% of the fuel for household purposes in Burkina Faso comes from biomass. The scarcity of wood resources in this country, and the growing pressure of an increasing population is a very real concern, not only due to the harmful environmental consequences of increasing biomass use, but also due to the influence of rising fuel prices on the economic situation of households

The context Improved Cookstoves (ICS) save at least 35% of fuel in comparison to traditional stoves, they not only contribute to a reduction of wood consumption and thus to the protection of forests and ecosystems, but they also help to improve living conditions in the households. The fuel saved by ICS, means money saved for wood purchase (in an urban context) or time saved for wood gathering (in a rural context). It also means less exposure to smoke and potentially hazardous open flames. At the end of the 1970s, researchers

in Burkina Faso developed a range of ICS to meet the needs of the Burkina Faso households.

Many projects have, since the 1980s, assisted the development and dissemination of ICS, but none of them have so far been able to establish a sustainable production and dissemination system.

So in 2005, the Foyers Améliorés au Burkina Faso (FAFASO) project was launched, financed by a joint project between the Netherlands Department for International Cooperation (DGIS) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Technical Cooperation agency

The preferred stove for the preferred woman: The Roumdé story in Burkina Faso

In 2005, the Foyers Améliorés au Burkina Faso project was launched, financed by a joint project between the Netherlands Department for International Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Technical Cooperation agency. Since launch, the project has disseminated 70,000 improved cookstoves in Burkina Faso by applying a commercial approach without any direct subsidies. This article discusses the steps by which this was achieved.

Author Andrea Reikat

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Dag-Hammarskjöld-Weg 1-5, 65760 eschborn.


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(GTZ) to disseminate ICS in Burkina Faso.

At the time the FAFASO project was initiated, the following was in place:— ICS designs had been adapted to local

needs. — A number of trained stove producers

existed.— A high percentage of the population

knew about the advantages of ICS.However:— People were used to getting their stoves

for free or at a highly subsidised price (as previous projects would provide them for free to increase dissemination rates).

— People were not used to looking for stoves to purchase themselves – they were usually obtained through women’s associations, political parties or government structures.

— People did not believe that stoves found on the markets could be of good quality as there was a tendency for stove producers to lower the stove quality standards as soon as the initiating projects turned their backs.

In response to this, FAFASO developed a strategy based on the principle that no ICS subsidies would be offered. This ensured that the price at which the stoves were sold could be maintained even after the project ended.An investment was made in:— Training stove producers— Making the stoves known to the

public— Assuring quality control — Establishing a commercial chain. Up to now, FAFASO has disseminated 70,000 stoves.

Starting big: The problem of supply and demand FAFASO started its activities in 2006 by retraining some 40 stove producers. It developed a logo: Roumdé which means ‘preferred wife’ in Mooré (the most common language spoken in Burkina Faso). The Roumdé serves two purposes; firstly to serve as a quality label and secondly, to create recognisably good

quality ICS. Based on this logo, a publicity campaign was conceived, starting in the two biggest cities and targeted solely at an urban public, as it is these people who would save money by saving firewood and hence have a strong incentive to invest in an ICS.

Having prepared a strategy for stimulating demand, FAFASO was suddenly facing problems on the supply side. The stove producers were used to projects that bought the stoves in bulk to distribute to the people; they deeply mistrusted a market approach where they would have to sell stoves individually, themselves.

FAFASO was therefore obliged to first stimulate demand before having assured the supply. And actually, when the TV advertisements started to run, when the posters where shown all over town and sales shows took place in every quarter of the capital, the stove producers sat down in their workshops and started working seriously. Within three months, production and sales figures increased from 300 a month to 1200 a month.

Roumdé improved stoves: advantages and prices

Burkina Mixte Stove Advantages: takes wood and charcoal Inconveniences: each size of pot requires its own stove

Prices: For 2: 2000 CFA (US$4)For 3: 2500 CFA (US$5)For 4: 3000 CFA (US$6)

Multimarmite Stove Advantages: takes several pot sizes (standard model takes 2 – 4 litre pots), takes wood and charcoal

Prices:Multimarmite Simple : 2.000 CFA (US$4)Multimarmite Malien : 2.500 CFA (US$5)

Ouaga Métallique Stove Advantages: very ecomomic can be built in huge sizes (15, 20, 30 etc.)Inconveniences: takes only wood each size of pot requires its own stove

Prices: For 2: 1.500 CFA (US$3)For 3: 2.000 CFA (US$4)For 4: 2.500 CFA (US$5)

Ceramique Stove Advantages: saves as much fuel as the metal stoves,cheaperInconvenience: be aware of breaking during transport

Prices: For 2: 500 CFA (US$1)For 3: 750 CFA (US$1.50)For 4: 1000 CFA (US$2)

These are Ouagadougou prices (CFA francs). In other towns prices are likely to change due to material costs. Prices for bigger stoves have to be negotiated with the producers

Table 1: Advantages and prices of the four Roumdé stove designs

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Six months later, some 4000 Roumdé stoves were sold each month.

To meet this increased demand, more stove producers had to be trained. Through the TV advertisements, Roumdé acquired a nationwide reputation. Today, some 200 metalsmiths in 30 towns all over the country produce Roumdé metal stoves, while some 150 potters (for the most part, women) have joined forces to produce (cheaper) ceramic stoves and another 150 masons are building large mud stoves for professional users (such as the traditional beer brewers).

The king of the kitchen and the beating husband: From TV to theatre From the start, FAFASO paid attention to spread the Roumdé message to a wide public. It focused its publicity campaign on one which was not too housewife-centred.

The star of its TV advertisement was a red cartoon figure representing a speaking stove that addressed people by saying: “Hello, I am Roumdé, the king of the kitchen.”

This slogan became (within just a few weeks) so well-known, that even pupils adopted it, saying: “Hello, I am the king of…”

The objective of the TV advertisement was not only to get the stoves and their advantages known, but also to make them fashionable. Even the husband had to understand that their wives would not forgive them if they did not buy them a stove.

In rural areas that have no access to TV programmes, other tools had to be used, but the strategy remained the same.

Theatre groups in several parts of the country were asked to conceive sketches, that were often centred around the idea of stupid husbands who, at the beginning, beat their wives because their meals were not ready and who, in the end, would ask forgiveness by offering them an ICS.

The sketches also took into account the cultural, preoccupation and linguistic particularities of the different regions.

We believe only what we see: Cooking demonstrations and test installations Whereas TV advertisements and events can easily convince middle-class housewives with a somewhat intellectual background; women who have never attended school tend more to believe only in what they see. Publicity events and theatre sketches in villages are thus, for the most part, accompanied by cooking demonstrations; giving women from each village a chance to prepare meals on different types of traditional and improved stoves with the same quantity of wood and ingredients for the meals prepared. Afterwards the different cooks tend to relate their experiences to the public.

In the eastern region of Burkina Faso, another marketing technique was developed which involved the temporary placement of ICS in restaurants for professional users. For this purpose, some stoves were bought by FAFASO and offered to restaurant owners for a test of two or three days. In more than 80% of cases, the restaurant owners bought an ICS afterwards – sometimes even paying directly for the stove that was placed. Having been rather suspicious of the idea at first, the stove producers are now adopting the technique, having seen that they can sell quite a number of stoves without too much risk of damaging the ones handed out to be tested.

Sponsoring: Be generous, get people talking about the product

FAFASO sometimes sponsors certain activities in order to become better known and more visible. The so-called ‘sweeping women’ of the towns of Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso, the girls’ soccer teams of the same towns and collective marriages have all been targeted, as well as fashion shows and gala dinners. In all these cases, media and local authorities were invited to explain the character of the sponsorship, to praise the advantages of the Roumdé stoves and to publicise the stove producers and the sellers’ addresses.

Lessons learnt: Publicity specialists are no stoves specialists During the first big publicity campaign, FAFASO staff members assisted at the sales exhibitions which took place in public spaces. These sales exhibitions were organised by a publicity agency each weekend but FAFASO staff soon realised that their presence was necessary to avoid false information so FAFASO suspended collaboration with the publicity agency and FAFASO staff members did the awareness-raising activities themselves, assisted more and more by the stove producers.

Since 2008, the stove producers have taken a proactive approach, organising the sales exhibitions themselves. They get on television to announce upcoming events, negotiate with the town councils for a public space where they can sell and advertise and have employed female sellers. They also negotiate needed budgets with FAFASO. Even if the stove producers are unable to continue the publicity activities to the same extent after the end of the FAFASO project, they will have acquired a huge capacity for presenting their services and their stoves. This is an enormous step for stove producers coming from the informal sector and having, for the most part, never attended any kind of formal education.

Collaboration with associations, communes and ministries

Former projects relied heavily on collaboration with the Ministry of Environment in Burkino Faso (sometimes with women and social activities) and with other associations. But as more or less everyone in Burkina Faso is (or at least considers themselves) poor, it is nearly impossible to get any one of these structures to collaborate without being paid. This holds true for civil servants, even if stove dissemination theoretically falls within their duties, and for associations, even if

Figure 1 (page 9): Woman cooking on a 3-stone fire, outskirts of Ouagadougou, November 2009 (Photo: Albert Kéré)

Figure 2: Roumdé stove producer, Kaya, February 2009 (Photo Albert Kéré)

Figure 3: Roumdé sketch, performed at Ziniare, 30 km north of Ouagadougou, June 2009 (Photo: Albert Kéré)

Figure 4: Roumdé stove producers selling their stoves during a publicity event in an Ouagadougou quarter, May 2009 (Photo: Albert Kéré)

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they are legally a non-profit. Relying on these kinds of structures therefore does not assure sustainability, as they won’t continue anything after the project has ended and there is no access to funding. On the other hand, it has to be asked, what can the ministries or associations contribute to stove dissemination that the project or stove producers cannot do themselves?

Regarding the communes, FAFASO was, during its second phase (2007-2009), part of the GTZ Decentralization Program in Burkina Faso, with the idea that the political debate in the communes could be used to stimulate stove demand. But realistically, the communes in Burkina Faso have other priorities apart from stove dissemination or environmental protection. In addition, by being regarded as an official partner and thus being obliged to be involved in activities and also in the selection of partners, FAFASO had been brought into political struggles and interest plays. One outcome of this, for example, was the selection of potential stove producers who were unable to produce stoves but were close friends of the mayor in a specific locality.

Allowing stoves to be built by the users of the improved 3-stone fire Once upon a time, Burkina Faso had known a period where nearly 80% of the villages knew how to construct the improved mud stove. These improved mud stoves were supposed to be for free as they could be built with local materials. They were supposed to be so easy to construct, that anyone could learn from a person initially trained, and build one themselves in their home.

When FAFASO started its activities, almost no improved mud stoves could be found in the villages despite the existence of a multitude of little projects that had continued their dissemination. FAFASO therefore conducted some training sessions and studied the reasons why dissemination had not worked until that time.

Today, FAFASO has trained some 300 women in the construction of these stoves, but as result only some 80 improved mud stoves have been built. There are two main reasons for this failure:1. The material is for free, but it is difficult

to obtain. It is not just any type of mud that can be used and mixing with other materials (cow dung, straw) is extremely laborious. It is not surprising that nearly all women do this to construct just one stove, each for their own household.

2. Construction is not as easy as it seems and people who have only practiced a few times, or have been trained by somebody else (who was trained), produce stoves so badly constructed that they consume even more fuel than the traditional 3-stone fire.

In conclusion, a professional stove constructor is needed to make a good stove, and hence a well constructed stove will never be for free.

What is needed to obtain sustainability?A sustainable dissemination of ICS will only work if we manage to get both the users and the stove producers addicted to the stoves: — The users will buy the stoves because

they want to experience its advantages (i.e. less expense for fuel, protection from fire and smoke, speed of cooking, their ownership and its value).

— The stoves will need to be adapted to local consumption habits, cheap enough to be acquired without much financial sacrifice and easily found on the market.

— The stove producers will produce the stoves because they bring a stable income, with a considerable profit margin.

— The project will share its knowledge with the stove producers (i.e. how to produce good quality stoves); make the stoves known to a large proportion of the population - inspire confidence in the quality of the stoves, and make the stoves accessible by enforcing commercialisation structures.

FAFASO’s dream is that Roumdé becomes a brand commonly known to everyone in Burkina Faso (like Maggi or Coca Cola) so that the natural response for each household is to look first for a Roumdé stove if a stove is needed at home. So far, a big part of this has already been achieved. Roumdé is now known by 90% of the population. There is still work to be done outside the big towns and it will take more time and patience. But with stove producers taking more and more initiatives of their own, FAFASO has finally found the allies it needs to rely on for the dissemination of ICS in Burkina Faso to make them at last, a sustainable and everlasting story.

Profile of the author

Dr Andrea Reikat is Technical Advisor for the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Burkina Faso. she has worked in Burkina Faso since 1992, and has coordinated the FAFAsO team since 2005. Andrea teaches history and anthropology at the university of Ouagadougou and at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe university in Frankfurt upon Main (GFR).

Figure 5 (previous page): A Roumdé stove sales point (Photo: GTZ)

Figure 6: Ceramic and metal stoves given to 150 couples of a collective marriage, saaba, outskirt of Ouagadougou, June 2009 (Photo: Albert Kéré)

Figure 7: Women having bought Roumdé stove (Photo: GTZ)

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Background

In 2009 German technical Cooperation agency (GTZ) and Restio Energy worked together on developing a marketing and distribution strategy for the StoveTec stove. The stove is an award-winning improved biomass stove which has not enjoyed significant traction and take-up in Sub-Saharan Africa to date. The objective here was to develop an effective and sustainable marketing strategy – based on commercial principles – which would succeed in opening markets for the stove and distribute the benefits associated with this product. The strategy was developed within the Nuon RAPS Utility (NuRa) operational area. NuRa is an off-grid energy service company

offering access to Solar Home Systems (SHS) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to the rural off-grid market.

There has never been any significant take-up of biomass stoves within South Africa. The country’s high electrification rate and relatively developed distribution infrastructure for modern fuel such as LPG and paraffin (kerosene) means that the use of biomass fuels tends not to receive the kind of attention that would facilitate improved access to biomass products and technologies. However, despite the modern profile of South Africa’s energy economy, there are millions of households that rely on biomass (principally fuelwood) in the fulfilment of their energy needs. The challenge was to develop a strategy that

would ensure take-up of the biomass stove in a market that was not familiar with the product and with a partnering company that had to realise a commercial return from selling the product.

While the project focus was on NuRa, the outcomes were to be accessible and implementable by the other concessions as well. The final product was to be a Stove Marketing Package (SMP), a package that would detail the most effective marketing and distribution strategy for the concessions. The document had to be sensitive to the location, markets and resources that characterise the concession companies and their operational areas. This article does not present the SMP but rather presents the marketing process;

Authors Robert Aitken1 Gavin Watson2 Wikus Kruger3

Restio energy, unit 12, Orange House, 63 Caledon Road, somerset West, Western Cape, south Africa, 7130

1email: [email protected] 2email: [email protected] 3email: [email protected]

A distribution and marketing strategy of the Stovetec Stove

This article discusses the various marketing strategies adopted in an attempt to bring the StoveTec stove, an improved biomass stove, into the rural markets in South Africa. Working with an off-grid energy service company called Nuon RAPS Utility, Restio Energy and German Technical Cooperation agency developed a marketing strategy that was suited to the company’s operations and the character of the rural market.

Figure 1: The one-door wood stove and two-door charcoal/wood stove (Photo: Restio energy)

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 08 March 2010Accepted 07 May 2010

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the process of learning and doing that ultimately informed the content and focus of the SMP.

Designed by Aprovecho Research Center (ARC), the StoveTec stove has made quite an impression in the improved biomass stove arena. Recent tests at the Sustainable Energy Technology and Research (SeTAR) Centre and within GTZ’s ProBEC initiative demonstrated a 51% fuel efficiency improvement when compared to an open fire and similar results in terms of emissions. The StoveTec stove has performed very well in a number of cooking tests in Uganda (Tyler 2009) and Kenya (Berkley Air 2010) and was also awarded the 2009 International Energy Champion Award by the UK-based Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy for its contribution to renewable energy initiatives in the developing world in 2009. Designed by ARC (Oregon, USA) and manufactured at Shengzhou Stove Manufacturers (SSM) (Zhejiang, China), the stoves are mass-produced according to strict quality specifications.

The two-door stove was not part of the marketing strategy as rural households in South Africa do not use charcoal.

The concessions

The principle geographic focus of the marketing initiative was the off-grid concession companies that operate in the more rural, off-grid regions of the country. As part of the Department of Minerals and Energy’s (DMEs) integrated electrification programme, a number of off-grid concessions were identified in regions where access to the grid was not likely to reach the bulk of the population for the foreseeable future. Within these areas, private concessionaires were granted exclusive access to subsidies for providing off-grid Photovoltaic (PV) electricity to rural households. These concessions are privately run and offer access to 50 Wp (Watt peak) SHS and LPG to the rural market. There are approximately 30,000 SHS users across the concessions and arguably a similar number of LPG-using households. While these numbers are relatively impressive the fact remains that

there are over two million rural households located in these regions suggesting that SHS and LPG are not regarded as particularly popular and/or affordable fuels for the majority of these households.

The concession companies are interested in diversifying their product/service base to penetrate the market more successfully. Given that approximately 60% of the households across the concessions rely predominantly on biomass (specifically fuelwood), improved biomass stoves has been identified as a very promising product to present to this market. Table 1 indicates the number of households across the concessions, the number of un-electrified households and the overall number of wood-using households. Wood-using households exceed the number of un-electrified households as many electrified households (estimated at 60%) are still reliant to verifying degrees on fuelwood.

Developing the marketing strategyBased on a detailed understanding of the market, including average household fuelwood consumption, current energy expenditure, and attitudes towards new energy technologies as well as an understanding of the resources and operating environment of the NuRA, we developed a range of marketing activities that we believed would succeed in this market environment.

Given the lack of precedents associated with the dissemination of improved biomass stoves in South Africa, we opted for a fairly broad approach in identifying the most appropriate, effective and sustainable marketing strategies.

What follows is a brief description of these initiatives.

Promotional posters

Six illustrative posters were designed and printed in colour and in A3 format. The decision to utilise posters as part of the marketing approach was based on a number of reasons. Firstly, they present an effective and useful medium with which to communicate specific messages;

secondly, it is a very accessible marketing format that manages to attract interest across generations; and thirdly, illustrative designs were chosen to create vibrancy and excitement around the stove and, more importantly, positioning it as an established consumer brand. The posters were placed at commercial centres, at the business premises of entrepreneurs, at the concession energy stores and other high visibility/foot traffic areas.

Flyers

A promotional flyer was designed and printed in black and white and in A5 format with Zulu wording. The flyer had a StoveTec logo at the top and GreenFire Technology as under script, with the message ‘isitofu sesimanje’ (‘modern stove’) under the logo, a picture of a one-door wood stove in the middle right adjacent to the words (on the left) ‘Cooks quicker, Less smoke, Uses less wood, Keeps its heat.’

These four phrases were chosen as they convey the leading benefits of the stove as they would apply to a rural household. A NuRa logo was inserted at the bottom so potential customers would know where the stoves can be bought.

Flyers were printed in large quantities and distributed (by employees, sales agents, etc.) at NuRa Energy Stores, pension points, town demonstrations and community meetings as a take-home pamphlet for interested customers.

Educational brochure

An educational brochure was designed and printed in colour and in A4 format with English wording.

The brochure contains two panels: one on the left displaying the stove (features and benefits) and one on the right containing information on global warming, deforestation and air pollution and the associated impacts.

This is done to make a direct correlation between the usage of the stove and the associated environmental benefits. The brochure was designed to be distributed within schools and to serve

Concession Total hhs Electrified hhs Un-electrified hhs Wood using hhs

NuRa 554,174 341,420 212,754 291,876

KES_Kzn 586,704 404,580 182,124 274,621

KES_Ec 292,600 175,465 117,135 158,934

Summer sun et al 611,297 304,585 306,712 392,615

Solar Vision 551,700 422,210 129,490 234,795

Unallocated 456,700 297,530 159,170 225,387

TOTAL 3,053,175 1,945,790 1,107,385 1,578,228

Table 1: Potential total concession stove market in number of households (hhs)

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both as a promotional and educational medium, and to increase awareness of the environmental issues that the stove (if used properly) seeks to address.

Stove user manual

A stove user manual of two colour A4 pages (printed back-to-back) was designed on the use of the wood stove and translated into Zulu.

The user manual gives step-by-step instructions on the setup and use of the wood stove by combining photo images with detailed descriptions. In addition, it indicates the best practices and dangers associated with using the stove and also provide NuRa’s contact details together with its logo. The user manuals were distributed to all of NuRa’s eight energy stores which handed them out to interested buyers.

Radio advertisements

Radio advertisements were broadcast on the local community radio station, Maputaland Community Radio in Jozini (which, according to RAMS 2009 has about 116,000 listeners).

NuRa has been making use of this station to communicate with their customers in the past and therefore have a working relationship with the station. However, customers still expressed the need to actually see the stove in operation, despite having heard about it on the radio.

Newspaper articles

A newspaper article that was written by Restio Energy on the stoves was published (at no cost) in the monthly newspaper of the Umkhanyakude District Municipality.

The article was published twice, first in English during the month of September and then in Zulu during October, 2009. The article informed readers about the stove project, what the benefits of the stove are and where they can be purchased.

The newspaper is distributed for free across the Umkhanyakude district and acts as a regular hand-out at community meetings.

Marketing blitz

The marketing blitz was essentially a very focused marketing drive in a specific village community, concentrating on that area for a week and saturating it with stove marketing materials and events. The first area to be targeted in this way was Mduda, just west of Mkuze. The marketing blitz consisted of distributing pamphlets, a school presentation, a community demonstration and a visit to the local pension payout point.

Mduda is a small village where NuRa’s presence, in addition to approximately 120 customers, consists of a marketing agent operating a point of sale. This point of sale differs from energy stores in that it only offers customers the facility of ‘topping up’ their credit for the SHS. However, Mduda is also the location where about 10 women who were supplied with stoves during the pilot phase, live. It was therefore decided that the relative familiarity with the stove and the newly established NuRa presence (in the form of the point of sale) made this a good location for the first marketing blitz.

The marketing blitz saw the introduction of a promotional price of R175 (US$23) on the stoves. Posters and flyers were also distributed throughout the area, alerting people to the stove in general and a cooking demonstration in particular later that week. Several phone calls to local traditional leaders and councilors were made to organise community meetings and to school principals for a school meeting. These meetings involved several trips to different communities.

The school demonstration was held at the local high school, with the entire school attending. With the help of a translator, children were quizzed and educated on global warming, deforestation and air pollution. Educational brochures handed out during the assembly also gave information on these topics. The children were then shown the StoveTec stove, with its environmental benefits, features and impacts, described to them in relative detail.

The school demonstration brought quite a number of issues to light that forced us to reconsider our marketing strategy:

A. Pupils’ knowledge of environmental issues was almost non-existent.

B. The educational brochures were not well received, possibly influenced by point A.

C. There was very little interaction/interest by the pupils.

D. The pupils by and large did not inform their parents about the stove and the community demonstration.

It is therefore clear that the school demonstration was a high effort, low impact initiative more suited to a development programme than a commercial marketing strategy.

The community demonstration was organised exclusively for the purpose of demonstrating the stove and required permission from two local traditional leaders as well as the local councilors. The demonstration was largely comparative in nature, with the intent to show how well the stove operates in comparison to an open 3-stone fire. People were also able to see for themselves how little smoke was emitted by the stove and were amazed.

Pension points: A further focus within the marketing blitz was the targeting of pension payout points for stove marketing. Pension payout points attract a large number of entrepreneurs who sell their wares to the pensioners and others from the local community. The plan was therefore to visit the pension points in the same way that local vendors do to sell their wares, demonstrating to people how the stove works, explaining the benefits of the product, handing out flyers and raising awareness in general. In addition, it was also considered an appropriate place to sell stoves since the grants given out at pension points are the major source of income in these rural areas. Another reason for the targeting of pension points was the fact that it made it possible to engage with a concentration of people who are normally quite dispersed.

Upon arriving at the Mduda pension point, we would set up a small display, start up a stove and boil some water while handing out flyers and encouraging people to come and see the stove in operation. We visited more than 10 pension points in this fashion, yet sold only three.

Figure 2: The six marketing posters (Photo: Restio energy)

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The feedback we received was that “We love the stove, but we did not budget for this.” Given the tight budgets in these areas, this is completely understandable.

However, once people saw the stove they were willing to budget for it and sales agents visiting these points the following month were able to sell all of their stock to an already informed and interested market. These pension point visits are therefore extremely important for awareness raising, despite requiring a great amount of resources from the concessions at the start.

Energy stores

NuRa has eight energy stores (points of sale and retail shops) which offer localised point of sale services to NuRa customers distributed throughout its operational area. In addition they retail LPG and other household energy products and services. They are NuRa’s first and most important point of contact with potential stove buyers. It is therefore essential that energy stores not only understand the stove and how to operate it, but that they take the lead in selling and marketing it to their immediate markets.

Training: Energy store staff members were trained on the use and benefits of the StoveTec stove by an independent community development trainer. This training was also intended to ensure that staff members would be able to train potential customers on the use of the stove, as well as addressing their questions surrounding the product.

Workshop: A workshop was held with all of the energy store managers at NuRa’s

headquarters in Mkuze. The purpose of the workshop was to ensure that energy store staff understood not only the market potential of the stove, but also their responsibility in getting the stove to the market. Up to this point, no stoves had been sold by any of NuRa’s energy stores. This was therefore an opportunity to look for the reasons behind this, using a participatory approach to address this issue.

The workshop definitely had a noticeable effect, not only in terms of staff attitude (which noticeably improved after the workshop), but also (and most importantly) in terms of sales. While a few energy stores struggled to get going, at least half of them are now selling stoves almost on a daily basis. To get the other energy stores in line, NuRa’s Manager of Energy Stores has been monitoring stove sales and visiting underperforming stores to train and incentivise staff members.

Incentive: To ensure that energy store staff were fully on-board, an incentive of R150 (US$20) was offered to the energy store manager who sold the most stoves each month. The minimum amount of stoves sold required to qualify for this prize was 10. The prize was first awarded to the energy store manager from Hlabisa, who quickly exceeded the minimum number of sales in August 2009 by selling 23 stoves in that month.

Sales agents and stokvels

In extending the distribution footprint of the stoves in a manner that is mobile and yet light on NuRa resources, sales agents were recruited. The five agents (all

women) were chosen because of their good relations with NuRa as marketing agents, their proven ability to do marketing within their areas (Hlabisa and Nongoma) and the fact that recruiting them for stove retailing meant relatively little extra administrative effort for NuRa. With the assistance of NuRa’s Community Liaison Officer, training was done on the operation of the stove and best practices for marketing the stoves within the relevant communities. In addition, a stove demonstration was done in which the sales agents had to assist and which was attended by a number of interested community members. Each of the sales agents were given five stoves of which one was to be used as a demonstration model. Sales agents were instructed to sell the stoves at R20 (US$2.5) above NuRa’s asking price in order for them to generate a sales commission. After the training workshop, all of the agents sold their stock within the first two weeks, which emphasised the practical and entrepreneurial value of having mobile and dispersed agents selling and marketing the stoves.

During the recruitment of these and subsequent groups of sales agents, some of which were members of stokvels (informal saving societies), there was a strong emphasis on the transfer of knowledge and hence hands-on demonstrations were done together with the prospective sales agents. In this way, training sessions were focussed on outcomes and ensured that agents became familiar with the stove. The significance of sales agents being members of stokvels is that they tend to be familiar with managing money as well as being able to network with members and other stokvels.

Figure 3: Pension payout point demonstrations (Photo: Restio energy)

Figure 4: Activity and investment line

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Conclusions

Restio Energy employed a number of marketing initiatives to determine which approach was most effective. There are a number of critical indices, which underpin a successful strategy. Arguably the two most important are firstly, how demanding in terms of time and resources are these marketing initiatives on the stove selling entity and, secondly, how effective they are in terms of improving sales.

The marketing blitz and pension point sales were the most demanding in resource requirements while the use of posters, sales agents, community meetings and the use of vendors within the towns required more modest investments. However, what is more revealing is to contrast these levels of investment with the impact on sales.

It is clear that using sales agents/stokvels were both the most low-resource investment options as well as the most yielding in terms of sales. In contrast, the school visit was both resource-intensive (in terms of time, personnel and vehicles) and low-yielding in terms of sales. On the back of these marketing initiatives and experiences we developed a more streamlined and suitable strategy for the NuRa concession.

What we developed was an evolving strategy with two dynamic elements: expanding the market by opening up new markets and then subsequently consolidating

these markets as the product enjoys greater traction and sales. Given the potential costs, uncertainties and challenges, we developed an approach that is light on concession resources when it matters, i.e. when the returns are low, and which anticipates greater involvement of the concessions once the sales start to pick up.

So, the marketing strategy is comprised of sales agents/stokvels who pioneer new markets at a very low cost to NuRa and then once these new markets mature, NuRa establishes a more permanent presence within them. It is a cyclical approach, with new markets opening and being consolidated continually.

At this stage it is too early to reflect on how successful this strategy will ultimately be. At this point the strategy is appropriate in the sense that it groups successful initiatives into a single overarching marketing plan.

References

Berkley Air, 2010. evaluation of Manufactured wood-burning stoves in Dadaab refugee camps, Kenya. The publication was produced for usAiD and was prepared by Berkley Air Monitoring Group.

Tyler, e., 2009. investigation of stove performance in households in south-western uganda.


Robert Aitken is the Director of Restio energy. He has been involved with household energy issues for the past 15 years looking at energy policy, the productive use of energy, energy service delivery models, technology transitions, energy products and the like.

Gavin Watson is the Market Development Manager for GTZ BeCCAP (Basic energy and Climate Change Adaptation Program) and is responsible for introducing and developing the market for renewable energy and energy efficient products in south Africa.

Wikus Kruger is a sustainable energy Consultant at Restio energy. Wikus’ key interests include energy-poverty linkages, delivery model innovations, sustainable transitions and energy decision-support models.

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StokvelRecruitment

SalesAgents

TownDemonstrations

CommunityRadio

CommunityNewspaper

School Visits

PensionPoints

Stove community meeting

FlyerDistribution

Low Sales

Low Effort High Effort

High Sales Impact

Vendors

Piggyback community meeting

Figure 5: Contrasting investment and return

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Could you tell me a little about yourself Abser and how you became involved with Grameen Shakti?

My professional career began with Grameen Bank where I worked as a Field Manager. I then went on to serve in many other different roles which have included Secretary of the Board of Directors, Chief of the Services Department for Head Office and Zone Manager, in which I supervised the overall operation of micro-credit in particular districts. I also served as Farm Manager for one of the biggest Fish Farms managed by the Grameen Bank. I took voluntary retirement from the Bank and joined its sister concern Grameen Shakti as General Manager in 2004. Following his recent resignation, I took over Mr Dipal Barua’s role as Managing Director of Grameen Shakti in December 2009.

As an organisation based on Mohammad Yunus’ founding principles of social enterprise, what is your social enterprise model?

Grameen Shakti was established in 1996 as a not-for-profit company to promote affordable, clean, modern and sustainable renewable energy technologies to the people of Bangladesh. Grameen Shakti’s goal was ultimately to improve living standards through access to this technology and to protect the environment. Our work is therefore focussed on our main products like Solar Home Systems (SHS), biogas plants, organic fertilisers and Improved Cookstoves (ICS). We are also conducting research and development in other technologies like wind turbine, solar thermal heater and biodiesel. For example, we are currently running a pilot project to produce biodiesel from the Jatropha plant. We have developed the business model through close interaction

and understanding of community needs for energy. Our engineers become social engineers and we have developed new financial mechanisms so that poor people can access renewable energy technology services. Our activities of disseminating solar, biogas, organic fertiliser and ICS created thousands of green jobs in Bangladesh. Especially for women in our society, who are getting direct benefits by participating in technician training programmes.

How are your products manufactured and distributed?

We have developed a huge network all over Bangladesh through more than 1000 field offices. There are about 6000 staff working in the field and most of them are engineers. For our SHS we import solar panels from abroad, mainly from Japan, while other components such as batteries, lamps, charge controllers, cables and other accessories, we procure from local suppliers in Bangladesh. For other technologies like biogas plants and ICS, we use local materials.

We have engaged the local community, especially women technicians, to assemble different solar accessories. This has created good income-earning opportunities for them. Apart from our regular staff; the women technicians, construction workers for biogas plants, ICS technicians and local transporters are being engaged in our distribution process.

Where are your assembly units? Are they in these remote areas you sell to?

We currently have about 850 branch offices in Bangladesh, which are based in remote areas. These branches are supervised by a regional office, which in turn is supervised by a divisional office.

So we work on three levels: Branch, Region and Division. Apart from this we have created 45 Grameen Technology Centres (GTC), managed by the women engineers. These GTCs are assembling solar components like mobile phone chargers, circuits and lamp shades and charge controllers with the help of local women technicians.

What are some of the challenges you face in selling your products?

The main challenge of this business is the high cost of a solar system. Marketing of a costly item for the rural poor is a big challenge. I mentioned earlier that we import solar panels from abroad. Bringing it down to the remote villages and the clients’ homes for installation needs a timely and efficient supply chain. The business also needs access to large amounts of capital.

For example, while we import solar modules, one container of modules is on the way, another is in our stocks while another should already be at our branch office for installation.

Road infrastructure is not good in Bangladesh and so we are forced sometimes to distribute by boat and many other unusual means.

We must ensure an efficient after-sales service to our clients; otherwise they will want their money back. Another challenge we face involves charging, maintenance and repair of the batteries of solar systems.

Transporting these batteries from our clients’ homes to our offices is very troublesome. In Bangladesh, once upon a time, the business of batteries was a monopoly. With our intervention other battery companies are coming up to overcome this monopoly.

Interview with Abser Kamal, Acting Managing Director of Grameen Shakti

In this Viewpoints feature we interviewed Abser Kamal, Managing Director of Grameen Shakti, sister concern of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, to find out more about the progress and challenges of their social enterprise. To read the full interview online just follow the link in the @HEDON box at the end of the article.

Viewpoints


Abser Kamal is the Acting Managing Director of Grameen shakti, a sister concern of Grameen Bank. He started his career in Jobra, the first Grameen Bank branch in 1978, after graduating with an Msc in Marine Biology at the university of Chittagong. Abser is considered an expert in the area of micro-finance.

Is there enough demand for your products?

Yes, during the last 14 years, the people of Bangladesh have become familiar with SHS and other renewable energy technologies. Since there is a huge gap between demand and supply of electricity generation in the country, people are relying more on solar in the non-electrified rural areas.

Out of our 160 million population, 60% are living without electricity. So, a huge market demand for a solar system has been created.

Is the improved cook stove design you are promoting an existing one, or did you develop it yourselves?

Grameen Shakti did not develop the design of the cook stove, this was developed by our science laboratory BCSIR (Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), a government institution that has been working for around 30 years. We have further developed the design and have taken a massive dissemination programme all over Bangladesh. We have planned to construct 500,000 cooking stoves in the next two years.

As a social enterprise, what are the ways that you raise awareness to people of these technologies?

We have established a huge network of more than 1000 (field) offices in all 64 districts and 16 islands of the country. We engage with schools, college students, teachers, families and community leaders directly.

We have installed solar systems in the rural markets, homes, shops, schools, mosques, rural clinics and many other places. It always has a demonstration effect to the local community when we install the first solar system.

This helps us reach large numbers of people gradually. Through our GTC we organise training and orientation for users and students. We use posters, leaflets, brochures and we visibly distribute to clients. In this way we raise awareness and so people gradually hear about our products.

What do you think are the strong elements of your business?

You know, we have a long working relationship with Grameen Bank. We have already established a huge network all over Bangladesh, so we can easily reach the people who need renewable energy services in an off-grid remote village. We provide quality solar modules with a 25 year warranty. We have skilled engineers and technicians at the doorstep of the rural people, which ensures a regular after sale service to the client. The design and the financial mechanism that we have developed is customer-friendly. We understand their necessities, their priorities and we build rapport with the local community. They are (also) engaged in installation, assembling and getting direct or indirect benefits of green energy. These all are strong elements of our business.

Do you work closely with the local government?

In the context of Bangladesh, the local government is yet to strengthen signi-ficantly its role for local development. We work independently; however, the government of Bangladesh is very supportive of our work. The government has exempted taxes on solar modules. We have achieved a good reputation during the last 14 years due to our work. Grameen Shakti works with all groups of people in rural areas, there is no limitation or restriction. We can work with people from the top and the bottom, and they like to work with us as well.

Are you finding that for some technologies, you are able to manufacture in country rather than import from abroad?

Yes, this is true for our biogas plant technology and ICS. We use locally available materials like cement and bricks for biogas plant and ICS construction. China has developed biogas plants made of fibreglass, which are easy to carry and install, less time-consuming and the cost will be the same as brick. So we are trying to produce similar biogas installations made of fibreglass in Bangladesh. The solar module that we import from abroad

will be produced in Bangladesh by other manufacturers this year. So, in the near future we will have solar modules in the country. For ICS we have been trying out different materials to replace the mud and have started researching into a possible cement-based material for constructing the cook stoves and so far it seems to be working well.

What is your financing scheme for selling your product?

Bangladesh as you know is a very poor country and the majority of people struggle economically. They therefore need products that are very cheap, that have a high longevity and good quality. So, we have developed a financial system based on credit, so that people can buy a product by paying a token amount of 15% to 25% of the total price of a solar system. The rest of the amount we collect in two to three years by monthly instalments. This has worked well and is very popular. For the low income people we have developed micro-utility systems. Under micro-utility, a client can rent out his lights to other neighbours and earn income from renting lights to pay for his monthly instalments.

Is there anything you would like to add?I would like to end by saying that

energy, in Bangladesh, is something people need tremendously. This is because the government does not have sufficient financial capital to invest in electrifying rural areas. If the PV (Photovoltaic) systems can be made cheaper, then people will truly benefit. We can bring the solution of sustainable green energy for everyone.

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Nick, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you became involved in marketing solar power to the bottom of the pyramid?

I was recruited three and a half years ago to set up SolarAid, the original idea for which came from Solarcentury, one of the UK’s largest solar energy companies. Solarcentury at the time was putting 5% of its profit into setting up an independent solar charity. While Solarcentury focused on the western market, SolarAid (based on a charity model rather than a commercial model) would focus on providing solar energy to developing countries.

Could you tell us a bit more about SolarAid’s aspirations to become a social enterprise?

We consider ourselves a social enterprise because we are generating revenue from our products, which have strong social outcomes for our customers. Enterprise was always at the centre of what we wanted to do. From my experience of development, I had seen that many NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) projects tended to be ineffective, or achieved the opposite effect from the one intended. One of the reasons, I feel, is that these are very much based on a hand-out model rather than a model that can create economic development.

Take the whole intermediate, appropriate technology movement for example and the idea that people can build their own devices to meet their own needs. Well, in the beginning, that’s what we did within SolarAid. Our first project involved people building their own solar panels and lanterns in workshops we had set up in Kenya and Malawi, until we realised the process just didn’t work. In the west for example, since when do we ask people to build their own washing machines?

We were having huge quality issues. Our workshops in Malawi and Kenya could not compete with the quality and the price of products manufactured in China in professional factories. Then there was the cost involved, the fact that our labour wasn’t sufficiently skilled and the fact that a lot of components would go missing and be stolen. That’s when we realised that our real aim was to make solar as widely available in developing countries as possible, and that the real problem that had to be addressed was distribution, not product design. We found ourselves working in crumbling economies and not healthy, functioning markets. So we have had to create markets from scratch. So in SolarAid we are not only trying to innovate and develop our own products but our priority is to develop distribution networks, and that is incredibly difficult!

In order to create demand, we have had to do, what I like to call, seeding the market. Once they’ve heard of it and want to buy solar products then we focus on putting a distribution system in place. And for that we use a technique known as micro-franchising.

Could you tell us a bit about micro-franchising and how this can strengthen local markets?

We work with the community to find local entrepreneurs who are reliable and trustworthy. We train them and then give them access to business in a box – under a brand we call Sunnymoney. We created this brand because the ‘Aid’ in our name ‘SolarAid’ has proved problematic. There are so many charities called something-aid, that aid has become linked to dependency. It is expected from a charity called ‘aid’, that it will provide products for free. So we called our micro-franchising system Sunnymoney to show

that it’s promoting entrepreneurialism. The franchisees become Sunnymoney entrepreneurs and have access to products we develop, which they sell to generate revenue for themselves. They can hire people, grow their franchise and also generate some revenue for SolarAid so that we don’t have to be entirely dependent on grants.

What are the messages SolarAid uses to promote solar technologies?

The first key factor is that of safety. We actually tell people that by having reliable lighting at night they will be safer. And this is something they know themselves. People are reluctant to go wandering around villages in rural areas at night as it is dangerous.

The second factor is that of saving money. When we do seeding in the communities, we help people calculate how much they spend on kerosene on a monthly basis. When they realise they are spending a fifth to a quarter of their income on kerosene and candles they are appalled. When you tell them that within three months they will have spent on energy as much as the price of one of our products they think it’s amazing.

The third factor is education. Getting the point across that kids could study in the evening with light. The fourth factor is health. People are continuously exposed to kerosene fumes which are bad for the eyes and the nose.

There are other selling points of course that are more context specific. We are the first organisation to be generating Gold Standard carbon credits in sub-Saharan Africa. Such that, when we sell a solar lamp to a consumer in Africa, they have to assign the right of this CO2 reduction to SolarAid for us to sell and get the money which goes straight back into the project, subsidising the products.

Interview with Nick Sireau, founding Executive Director of SolarAid

In this Viewpoints feature we caught up with Nick Sireau, founder and Executive Director of SolarAid, to find out how the charity has evolved into a social enterprise, with commercial marketing at the heart of their solar market development efforts. You can read the full interview online – just follow the link in the @HEDON box at the end of the article.

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And of course, the product needs to look good, which brings in the status element of it. For example, our product looks like a light bulb, so that when a customer has visitors, the latter will see the product and think, ‘Oh, you have real electricity in your home!’ That’s very important.

How you can turn a smart technology that works, into a marketable product for the bottom of the pyramid?

One of the first things to note is that Africa is flooded by poor quality cheap products from China and this gives a very bad name to new products. So we have to make sure that the product is robust. You need a product that will last in a tough environment where it will be moved and bumped around. The average Chinese product in Africa, if it works at all, will last a few days to a week. We want a product that will last at least three years if not more. Our aim is seven years.

Secondly, it has to obviously be of good quality, reliable and to shine a light that is equal or better to what you get from kerosene. For this reason, we use very good quality LED (Light-emitting Diodes) that last tens of thousands of hours and long lasting, good quality rechargeable batteries. The third design criterion is that of affordability. And often there is a trade-off between quality and affordability.

Once we have the product ready, we just need to sell at the right time of year, for example after the harvest, when there is a lot of disposable income.

Regarding your micro-franchising model, how do you build the business and marketing capacity of the franchisees so that they can run a sustainable business?

Well, for example, in Kenya we set up our franchisee selection process such that entrepreneurs have to be elected by the community. If people want to be even considered as franchisees, we have to know they have the support of the community. So they will undergo a rigorous selection process during which they run campaigns and that way get their own customer base. After that, we interview those elected and select the best ones who we train in marketing, sales, business planning,

solar technologies, repair etc. At the end of that they sit a test after which, if they pass, they become franchisees. We then give them access to product stocks which they begin selling. We stay in contact with them every week over SMS texting and pay them a visit once a month to make sure things are running smoothly and to give more training. We also provide them with an operations manual, which explains everything in detail including warehousing, stocks, pricing, repairs, warranties etc.

How do you promote the Sunnymoney scheme and how do your franchisees promote their products?

We start with the seeding of the community, which involves big demonstrations on how our products work, to thousands of people. We also have a solar vehicle in Kenya we call the Solar Roller. This is painted yellow and has a 250W/150W solar cinema that travels from one community to another, showing films on solar energy. Furthermore, during their election campaigns, the franchisees -in promoting themselves- are also promoting their future business and products. Once established, they will promote and sell their products at weddings and funerals; they will do radio advertising and distribute branded material including leaflets, branded caps and t-shirts. Our brand is of course on product boxes as well. We are trying out each technique to find the cheapest and the most effective.

What is your view on subsidising or donating products as a means of distributing technologies?

What we found is that if you give stuff for free you kill the market for entrepreneurs trying to sell similar products. If I am distributing radios for free for example, any shop in Africa selling radios will end up shutting down. Programmes therefore, that hand products out for free, actually undermine the economy and put people further into poverty. Mind you, this is different from providing aid in a disaster relief context, such as in Haiti for example, where everything has been destroyed. So my plea is that NGOs stop all donation schemes of solar lamps and lanterns.

Do you feel you may be creating dependency of the communities you are operating in, to cheap products from China?

In a perfect world we would be able to have manufacturing facilities in the areas where we operate in Africa. But I don’t think Africa can compete with the industrialisation we see in China, nor with the quality. Your priority is to offer the rural villager the best product you can at the best price and that, at the moment, is produced in China. This is the reality.

Have you found products cheap enough to manufacture but of good enough quality that you can sell and make a profit?

Yes, and our entrepreneurs do make a profit. They earn roughly three or four times what they would otherwise be earning if they were not a micro-franchisee.

Do you offer different products for different affordability levels?

That is the aim. At the moment we only have one product called Ravi, named after the Hindu Sun God. This comes with a 1.8W solar panel, costs US$28 and can power a mobile phone charger or provide lighting. We are also introducing a desk lamp for half that price and a large multi-lamp for twice that price.

Thank you Nick, is there anything else you would like to mention?

What we are trying to do in the areas we are operating in is incredibly tough and it takes time. We are therefore interested to partner with organisations and individuals on a similar journey. The ethos of our whole organisation is based on sharing, transparency and accountability – finding people to work with, share our learning and improve what we are doing.

Dr Nicolas sireau is founding executive Director of solarAid, an award-winning non-profit organisation that promotes the use of solar power in developing countries. Nicolas started his career as a financial journalist, working for think-tank independent economic Analysis (iDeA) and then newswire Bridge News, before moving to the non-profit sector.

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Ron, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you became involved in marketing products for the bottom of the pyramid?

My background is in engineering and business management. I started my career in the field of aerospace engineering and programme management with Martin Marietta Aerospace where we designed rockets and spacecraft. But for the last 15 years I have run several consumer durable companies, helping them with product design and development and setting up their distribution and sales networks. My background has therefore been more in the for-profit business sector rather than the non-profit sector.

Given your background Ron, what was it like to enter an organisation the objective of which is not just profit? Is there a challenge of ensuring a sustainable business when the products you are promoting are more for a social purpose and less for making a profit?

It is absolutely wonderful to work for an organisation with a social cause. At the same time, all the business principles for a commercial business can still apply. There also seems to be a misconception that because an organisation is non-profit, that you do not need to make any money from your activities, which is not the case with Envirofit. Our objective as a social enterprise is to break even with our business (i.e. not make a loss), and in parallel to do social good.

Thinking about Envirofit’s clean cookstoves, in your experience how do you turn a smart technology into a marketable product?

You cannot assume that just because you have designed a slick technology that your intended beneficiaries will want it. If

the end user won’t use the product because it doesn’t meet their needs, then it’s not a great product. The best way to create demand for your products is by designing a product that people aspire to own and that directly solves a compelling problem for them. You must design a product around people’s desires and wants, not around your own goals or around ideas you think people should like.

What are the challenges of bringing a product for the bottom of the pyramid to market and how do you overcome them?

There are several key challenges, the first one being education of the consumer about the product and its benefits, just like with any consumer durable product. However, due to the nature of Envirofit’s target customers (remoteness, lack of access to media, literacy) this cannot necessarily be done by conventional means. And in the case of cookstoves in particular, you have the challenge of trying to sell a brand new product concept (clean technology cookstoves), in an old product sector (traditional cookstoves). And so there is, understandably, consumer scepticism to overcome and a significant challenge for us to prove that our products do what we claim. It’s a matter of establishing faith in the credibility of the brand.

The second challenge is that of the creation of a solid distribution network. At Envirofit we achieve this several ways, from women’s self-help groups and district organisations to a classic multi-tiered commercial distribution network. What is important is to train the dealer network such that they understand the product benefits, how to use the stoves, and the most effective sales messaging around the product for different target customers (i.e. men versus women).

“If you are selling Honda cars, you are selling different models, which are part of a product line. Every one of those products is targeted towards a specific demographic with its own requirements and affordability levels. In a similar way, we have produced a line of stoves.”

Do you think that awareness campaigns which advocate for behaviour change for a social benefit, can be effective, especially if that change requires an investment into a new product?

We understand that people have a hard time changing social habits. That is one of the reasons Envirofit developed a stove that mimics the traditional cooking method, with the same type and size of fuel traditionally used. We wanted to minimise this barrier to entry and honour the traditional cooking methods and desired taste of the food. But we certainly think awareness campaigns can be effective, as long as the suggested behaviour change is

Interview with Ron Bills, Chairman and CEO of Envirofit

In this Viewpoints feature we also met with Ron Bills, Chairman and CEO of Envirofit, to find out how his experience in industry is guiding the social enterprise’s efforts to commercialise improved cookstoves in India and Africa. You can read the full interview online by following the link in the @HEDON box at the end of the article.

Boiling Point. issue 58 — 2010 23

VIEWPOINTS

not radically different and the customer perceives a great enough benefit.

The Shell Foundation’s Breathing Space programme should get a lot of credit for trying to change these perceptions. The Shell Foundation’s Room to Breathe campaign highlights three main issues: Awareness, Availability and Affordability. They have done tremendous work raising awareness around the hazards of indoor air pollution and advocating for the best solutions.

We’re really talking about a new generation of cookstoves. We have, until now, sold 100,000 stoves in Southern India. We have created and are sustaining a market for our products. If we can keep this level of acceleration over the next few years we’re going to see massive deployment of products on the market.

What is Envirofit’s manufacturing and dissemination model for providing cookstoves?

The scale to which we are trying to disseminate the Envirofit stove, in order to reach a significant proportion of the world’s population, requires mass production. It is therefore impossible to achieve by building local manufacturing centres in every village where we operate. It would be like Honda starting to build automobiles in every city that they hope to sell automobiles. Therefore Envirofit’s product design and our business model has been tooled from the beginning for mass production. We currently manufacture in two locations, India and China, from which we can sell stoves anywhere in the world.

Think about when Honda first introduced its cars to the US. Its first step was to develop a market for the products, so it exported finished cars to the US and built the market demand. Only then did they move on to the second step, which was to localise manufacturing plants in the US, yielding lower production costs. Envirofit’s methodology for entering new emerging markets is the same. It is highly unlikely that we will be able to mass produce in every country – because of quality control, material availability, capital equipment required to set up a manufacturing business etc. So the first

step is to set up the market, and make sure we have great distribution and dealer channels. And then the second step is to look at localising assembly or manufacturing to lower end user costs.

What is the difference between Envirofit’s Marketing Strategy for clean cookstoves and that for the 2-stroke engine retrofit kit?

The clean cookstoves business is more of a rural marketing effort, whereas the 2-stroke retrofit kit business is much more focused on urban areas and members of drivers’ associations. The basics of how you market to these two types of consumers are the same. Up front you need to create products that people see as aspirational in need or value. Then you need good marketing collateral (i.e. flyers, sales brochures, posters, demonstration scripts) that use voice-of-the-customer appropriate messaging that consistently and clearly promote the compelling benefits.

In Southern India for example we use techniques like wall paintings, which are very common, to advertise Envirofit. We also conduct van campaigns where we drive a van from one town to the next, gathering all the people together for a demonstration on Envirofit’s clean cookstove. We also train our dealers to be able to conduct demonstrations.

Are you providing different products for different segments of the market?

Yes. If you are selling Honda cars, you are selling different models, which are part of a product line. Every one of those products is targeted towards a specific demographic with its own requirements and affordability levels. In a similar way, we have produced a line of stoves and accessories that retail between US$15- US$30 in India. For example, we have a G-3300 cookstove with an LPG accessory, a double pot accessory kit that includes a chimney, a pressure cooker etc. We are also in the process of releasing a charcoal stove in Africa, which reduces charcoal consumption up to 35% and emissions up to 75%. Charcoal is a tremendous CO producer and this is the only mass-produced stove design on the market that can get beneath the World Health

Organisation 60 minute exposure level under typical African conditions. Since the vast majority of people that currently cook with charcoal need to purchase that charcoal, having up to 35% savings on that purchase can be a great economic boost for a family.

Ron, have you yourself ever cooked using an Envirofit Cookstove?

You know, I use one all the time for barbeques. I don’t cook every meal on it, but when I do use it, it cooks great and is very simple to use. It does not use a lot of wood and is a fantastic camping stove. I think it’s a great product!

Is there anything else you would like to mention?

We want to raise awareness of Envirofit’s solutions to groups that work in bottom of the pyramid markets in terms of disaster/aid relief, women and children’s health and global environmental issues. We are eager to partner with groups to help expand our reach and get these products into the hands of end users.

It is a great honour to be in my current position at Envirofit and to have the opportunity to partner with organisations such as the Shell Foundation, in the creation of products for the bottom of the pyramid.

Finally, I hope other manufacturers will join in this effort of clean cookstoves and creation of these markets, because it certainly is not a monopoly. We want and need other manufacturers in order to create a strong and viable clean cookstove business. That is what will truly make an impact.

Ron Bills, Chaiman and CeO of envirofit, is a visionary leader with the fundamental idea of creating scalable and sustainable social enterprises at the base of the economic pyramid that are focused on energy and pollution reduction and health and economic improvement.

Figure 1: The G3300 fuelwood stove (Photo: envirofit)

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TOOLKIT

24

Stove marketing tools and strategies

Marketing is defined as getting the right product (in this case a stove), of the right quality (to

the target users), in the right quantity, at the right price, in the right place, at the right time - and with each business person in the marketing chain making a fair profit. This calculation should not include those involved in the stove project, only those running the business.

Experience has shown that many stove producers lack basic commercial skills, and/or technical shortcomings. Such problems can be overcome by appropriate training, visits to successful manufacturers, and more specific training approaches that are developed according to each entrepreneur’s needs.

All cookstove projects need to have a robust marketing component as part of their strategy. Projects can assist through: — Training of producers in marketing — Identification of products and the

best ways to sell them — Workshops on public sensitisation

strategies — The use of public events for

exhibitions — Developing strategies, with the

producers, to address different types of customer.

Product This ‘P’ includes the range of products, their quality, the product design, branding, packaging and accompanying services. These key factors should be considered: — Design and type of improved stove has to

meet customer needs – fixed or portable stoves; single pot or two pot stoves etc.

— Stoves need to comply with quality standards that have to be made known to the purchaser.

— Improved stoves need to have a good reputation: to be known as durable and easy to handle.

— Improved stoves have to be attractive for the market, thus they should have status, style, and other desirable product attributes.

Price To make a profit, the price has to include all the costs associated with producing and selling the item, and still have a profit margin. To get the profit launched it may be necessary for the price to be a ‘special offer’, or have a low margin until the product is established within the market. The price may include interest if credit is offered.

Place

Planning the location of manufacture, sales and distribution is important: — Locating workshops close to either raw

material supplies or sales outlets will reduce transport costs.

— Sales outlets should be easily accessible and well publicised.

— Sites should be sought out for exhibitions and demonstrations.

— Stove marketing is most promising in areas with severe fuelwood scarcity.

Promotion

Promotion describes any advertising or awareness-raising tactics or activities that serve to attract customers and inform them of products and services. Promotion includes communication strategies and developing a brand image (a corporate design encompassing key information regarding the product). It is conducted mainly through advertisements, personal sales by producers, involvement of celebrities, participation at fairs and exhibitions, public events and public relations.

A large-scale, successful and sustainable market in improved cookstoves can only function where there are sufficient qualified entrepreneurs and premises to serve and develop the stove market without any reliance on subsidies. Initial (partial) subsidies may be necessary during an introductory phase to establish stove production, but they should be limited in time and scale.

The principle that promotion and scaling up of improved cookstoves should follow an essentially commercial approach is one of the main lessons learnt from numerous stove projects supported by GTZ HERA.

Marketing extract from The Cooking Energy Compendium

Toolkit

The ‘Four P’s’ of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion

As a general rule, marketing includes all the activities that lead to increased profitable sales. At the core of marketing strategies are the so-called ‘Four P’s’ that are the four main pillars of the marketing mix. These include the identification and development of new Products, at an appropriate Price, through distribution channels and selling in the right Places, supported by Promotion.

Author GTZ HERA

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Dag-Hammarskjöld-Weg 1-5, 65760 eschborn

25

TOOLKIT


TV &

Rad

io C

omm

ercia

ls P

oster

s & Banners Lampposts & Hoardings Exhibitions Calendars Newspaper Articles M

ovies Brochures

PRODUCTMARKETING

Marketing research and strategyBaseline market research The development of a marketing strategy starts by identifying a viable market and its potential. Baseline market research should include: — Type of stove needed — Market size, domestic fuel types, prices

and uses — Supplies of raw material — Supply chain analysis on existing stoves

(from raw material providers through to final retailers)

— Consumer analysis (behaviour, attitudes, traditions), consumer aspirations

— Likely changes affecting the market: seasonal changes in fuel (e.g. bought wood prior to harvest, and residues post-harvest); improved income when cash crops are harvested; other seasonal financial commitments, including school fees

— Possibilities for integrating stove enterprises into existing ‘traditional’ production and marketing systems, such as pottery-making, metalworking, and local sales outlets.

The results of baseline market research provide the basis for a marketing strategy to: — Estimate price/profit margins at each

stage of the market chain— Assist the development of a retail

network — Develop packages for specific market

segments— Develop promotional materials and

raise the business profile through selected commercial media and locally appropriate advertising approaches, such as the use of celebrities to promote the stoves, theatre and dance etc.

Product promotion – proven strategies A high quality, user friendly and affordable stove does not automatically translate into high volume sales. Large-scale dissemination of such a stove is much more likely to be achieved with professionally designed and implemented marketing campaigns.

Promotional strategies and product marketing

Promotional strategies are at the core of any product marketing. Over the years, projects by GTZ and other organisations have contributed substantially to this activity by initiating, developing and testing promotional strategies. Experience has shown that: — Strategies need to be selected and

adapted to meet local conditions and the target group(s) in each locality.

— Some promotion may need to be repeated at intervals to have a substantial impact.

— Budgets need to be subdivided for each promotional activity.

— The involvement of extension services should always be included in promotion.

Advertising Marketing strategies should include short, memorable, crisp brand names, and eye-catching logos to raise the profile of the stove and make it a popular commodity that users are willing to purchase.

Product marketing can make use of advertising through a range of media (see Figure 1) using memorable slogans, and colourful images (particularly for those who do not read), to highlight key messages.

Campaigns and demonstrations

Campaigns and demonstrations can help to familiarise people with the benefits of a new stove. Such activities might include: — Public campaigns to highlight the

advantages of improved cookstoves in local languages. When working with a community, it is more important to highlight stove economy than the global environment

— Theatre groups to enact key messages through entertaining dance, song and sketches

— Cooking demonstrations to show the potential of improved cookstoves and encouraging discussion during the demonstrations to allow the sales person to understand the potential customers’ needs and expectations

— Cooking competitions at local markets are great fun and create a relaxed atmosphere!

Educational institutions Educational institutions can play a significant role in sensitising people to the benefits of improved cookstoves. Some of the measures described in this section should be initiated during a project; usually such measures require project support: — Development of a household energy

curriculum.— Integration of biomass energy courses

into higher educational institutions, particularly as part of basic health and hygiene training courses.

— Use of improved cookstoves in school kitchens, teacher training centres, and health centres.

Branding and logos To place a product successfully in the market it must have a well-selected brand name, which is short, easy to remember, easy to pronounce and easy to associate with the product. An appropriate brand name creates a link between the consumer and the product and affects the way the consumer relates to that product.

Part of the branding exercise should be the creation of a unique logo, giving a visual reminder of the product. It is better to avoid having the name of the project organisation on the logo as it may lead people to expect subsidies. Besides, logos should support businesses, not projects.

Getting the price right The cost of manufacture and its •associated profit margin needs to be calculated accurately for each stage of the market chain. Although affordability is important, low •cost should not be associated with low quality under any circumstances. Higher prices may make goods more •saleable if they are associated with better quality in the minds of some consumers. Payment in instalments can be an option •(with clearly defined payback rates).

Figure 1: Promotion can use a range of media

www.HeDON.info/NQuAFull Cooking Energy Compendium* Marketing Training Modules*

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GTZ NEWS

Annual Meeting of West African Stove Projects in Natitingou, BeninAll francophone stove projects that are currently being carried out by GTZ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development met with stove researchers, technicians and stove producers at the Annual Meeting of West African Stove Projects in Northern Benin (16 – 29 November 2009). The topic of the workshop was ‘Stove promotion in rural areas’. Team members from stove projects in Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mauritania, and for the first time Kenya, presented and discussed their experiences with stove technologies for rural areas and marketing approaches and methodologies for impact studies. Technicians from Prakti Design, India, shared the results from their research in several West African projects and offered a practical construction course on the new (rocket type) stove model with pre-fabricated bricks. Workshop participants admired the professional skills of a lady blacksmith, assembling a metal stove. A field trip which included visits to a pottery stove manufactory, restaurants, women’s groups producing shea nut butter using energy efficient stoves and visits to metal stove producers allowed for vivid discussion and peer reviews between the different stove projects and their Benin colleagues. Participants left satisfied with the rich discussions and exchange of experiences. The 2010 meeting will focus on the bioenergy value chain; standardization of stove tests/quality control; impacts and sustainability of stove promotion; stove producer training; field tests for the new rocket stove model. GTZ Senegal will host the francophone stove community in September 2010.

Potential of bioenergy production in smallholder farming systems in MozambiqueIn collaboration with the Ministry of Energy Mozambique, Wageningen University and UK company Envirotrade, GTZ-ProBEC has assessed the potential of bioenergy production in smallholder farming systems. The study was carried out in the vicinity of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

It was established that the main barrier to the development of a bioenergy market in this community is the mismatch between the high potential for local bioenergy applications and the actual production of bioenergy crops, which is too low to meet that potential. It was further concluded that the critical and restraining resource for smallholder households which limits this production, is labour.

Farmers were in general happy to try new crops and production methods if critical conditions are met. In the case of Jatropha, measures need to be put in place to address the fact that there is very little knowledge around farming techniques, there is an uncertain market as well as a high investment risk factor given that it takes a few years before becoming profitable. Focusing primarily on local bioenergy applications appears to be more stable for communities and less sensitive to external market distortions. With an appropriate enabling environment that facilitates learning, trust-building and establishment of local markets, the local market approach can contribute to sustainable development through local production, local processing and local use.

The study is available from the ProBEC website.

NewsEditor Lisa Feldmann

GTZ HeRA, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmBH, Postfach 5180, 65726 eschborn.


Carbon finance is seen by many as a key mechanism to increase the dissemination rate of improved cookstoves in developing countries. However, due to a number of obstacles faced by stove projects in the carbon market, only a small number of project activities have been implemented successfully.

In response to this, GTZ’s programme on basic energy services (HERA) has launched ‘Carbon Markets for Improved Cooking

Stoves – A GTZ Guide for Project Operators’. The guide offers an overview of the various steps in the project cycle of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Gold Standard projects; describes existing methodologies and addresses the most critical issues in project development. The guide is updated on a regular basis and has recently been supplemented with the latest changes in CDM methodology AMS-II.G.

GTZ HERA: Guide on carbon markets for improved cooking stove projects

Figure 1: Participants of the West African regional stove workshop (Photo: GTZ)

Figure 2: Pure plant oil (Photo: sandra Bos)

26

GTZ NEWS

Recent developments in household energy conservation in Tunisia By Agnes Klingshirn

Tunisia is a modern state. Most resident households use gas stoves for cooking and baking. Bread can be bought cheaply from commercial bakeries but most households still prefer fresh bread baked in the traditional wood-fired tabouna ovens. These ovens consume approximately 44% of all woody biomass used in Tunisian households. In the early 1990s the Agence Pour la Maitrise de l’Energie (AME), assisted by GTZ, carried out a project in Tunisia that was concerned with saving energy in the area of baking bread (see Boiling Point 38). Technical expertise recommended that if the tabounas were covered with a well fitting lid, around 50% of the energy needed could be saved. A sturdy and attractive lid was designed and local blacksmiths were trained to produce them. 16,000 lids were produced and over time sold at a heavily subsidised price to households in the Northern part of the country but after the project came to an end the lids were no longer produced and marketed.

Since 2006, the Agence Nationale de la Maitrise de l’Energie (ANME) with the assistance of GTZ has implemented the project ‘Promotion des Energies Renouvelables et de l’Efficacité Energétique en Tunisie’, which is picking up the idea of disseminating tabouna lids from the project whilst also looking

at the total household energy saving potential in Tunisia as a whole. Assessment studies in Northern and Southern Tunisia indicated two potential areas where energy savings could be achieved: promoting tabouna lids in the North and replacing the 3-stone fire, which is still widely used for cooking. Despite the fact that LPG has now reached remote rural areas, in many households, meals which take a long time to cook are still prepared on the 3-stone fire in the North and South.

During a recent situation analysis (2009/10), industrially produced rocket stoves from StoveTec and Envirofit were demonstrated to assess the interest and possible acceptability of such stoves to replace the 3-stone fire. The majority of families visited showed a high interest in buying these technologies and so a pilot test is currently being planned involving 100 households. In the North the attractive tabouna lids will be reintroduced plus the biomass stoves, while in the South only the stoves will be piloted, since the families there are already using lids. During the pilot phase, local blacksmiths will be retrained to produce the lids and the possibility of industrial production of the lids and stoves will be examined.

www.HeDON.info/WKuAFull GTZ news online* Editor profiles and latest contact details* ‘Carbon Markets for Improved Cooking Stoves Guide’* GTZ ProBEC website*

Meet us @HEDONFigure 3: industrially produced tabounas Figure 4: Tabouna lid from oil drum (Photo: Agnes Klingshirn)


PRACTICAL ACTION NEWS

New European Public Awareness project on Energy Access in AfricaPractical Action launched a new three-year project in April 2010. The project titled ‘Energy Access for the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa to meet Millennium Development Goals’ is funded by the European Union (EU) under its Non-State Actors programme. Over its lifetime, the project aims to raise public and political support across the EU for doing more about energy access. This includes directing more money for energy access, and achieving an EU Council Resolution on the subject. It builds on the commitment of the Czech presidency (the first six months of 2009) to energy access.

The project will be led by Practical Action (UK) but implemented by a consortium of four organisations: Practical Action (UK), Stockholm Environment Institute (Sweden), the University of Catalunya (Spain) and EDUCON (Czech Republic).

Follow up on the United Nations Sasakawa Award for Practical Action’s work in Peru

In 2008, Practical Action’s work in renewable energy in Peru was awarded the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Sasakawa Award of US$100,000 for its substantial contribution to the protection and management of the environment. In February 2010, Practical Action was called to report on the results of the award, and to present its findings at the Eleventh Special Session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum of UNEP held in Bali, Indonesia.

Teodoro Sanchez, Energy Technology and Policy Advisor at Practical Action, was one of the key people involved in the design and implementation of Practical Action’s work on micro-hydro in Peru (from 1993 to 2004) and he travelled to present the Practical Action report. The Sasakawa Award enabled Practical Action to implement three new micro-hydro schemes in Peru (added to more than 50 already installed) and also enabled them to explore new opportunities for a project of this sort in Bolivia.

NewsEditor Lucy Stevens

Practical Action, The schumacher Centre for Technology and Development, Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby, CV23 9QZ, uK email: [email protected]

Figure 1: Teodoro sanchez, energy Technology and Policy Advisor at Practical Action (Photo: Practical Action)

www.HeDON.info/CKuAFull Practical Action news online* Editor profile and latest contact details* PISCES studies and website*

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PISCES

PISCES has produced an analysis of the experience of commercialisation of Improved Cookstoves (ICS) in Sri Lanka, and specifically that of the widely used Anagi stove, which was the outcome of a series of projects over three decades. Today, there is sustained capacity for the annual production of 300,000 stoves nationwide and there are over 3 million stoves in use. There is much to learn from the commercialisation of Anagi stoves including the importance of programme continuity through different phases of the sector, combining international experience with local ownership, involvement of both Governmental Organisations (GOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in development phases transitioning to a private-sector final delivery model, user-responsive product design, and responding to the challenges of targeting both the formal and informal sectors. The marketing strategy in particular was key to the success of the Anagi (meaning ‘brilliant’ in Sinhala) and included an initial focus on middle-income and urban consumers before extending into rural and poorer markets.

28

PRACTICAL ACTION NEWS

Biodigesters used to improve agriculture and reduce poverty in the Andes of PeruPractical Action has started a process of investigation and action to trial tubular biodigesters in rural, mountainous areas of Peru. These produce both biogas, and a rich sludge that can be used by the farmer as a natural fertiliser. The experiment was carried out in the communities of Chanta Alta and Yanacancha in Cajamarca, Peru.

The process involved the installation of a biodigester of 1.25 metres in diameter and 8 metres in length. The digester has a capacity of 20 kg of biomass (cow dung and crop residues), which is mixed with 60 litres of water per day. After 90 days (on average), the sludge is produced.

We have now installed 13 biodigesters at altitudes ranging between 1,500 metres and 4,000 metres. The gas is being used for the operation of a small kitchen and the sludge is used for root crops, cereals and pasture grasses.

We have also carried out some studies on the chemical composition and quality of the sludge to identify potential markets for its sale. The concept is that clusters of eight families, organised into a small group, can improve their own agricultural production, benefit other families, care for the environment and generate more income. Each month, 2400 litres (60 gallons per family) of the sludge can be produced. At a price of 7 US cents per litre, this would represent a reasonable additional income for the families. Production can continue over eight months of the year.

This experience has shown that single-family systems of low-cost biodigesters can be afforded by poor rural families. They are a valuable mechanism for access to energy, and can also become a tool for income generation, using family partnerships in the context of small rural enterprises.

Rural energy planning for remote areas using renewable energies Practical Action in Peru has been working to promote rural energy planning in the province of San Pablo of the Cajamarca region in Peru; an area of 53,000 inhabitants. In particular, we worked in localities which are not included in plans for electrification by the state through grid extension. In these areas, renewable energy is a feasible technological alternative which can improve the quality of life and encourage better dynamics of production, while not affecting the environment.

The process was made possible through a partnership between local governments and some international aid agencies including the US Green Empowerment, Engineers Without Borders ISF of Barcelona and the Generalitat Valenciana – Spain. Training was central to the process; working with both technicians and local leaders in the implementation and management processes.

The process of formulating the plan and the electrification programme using renewable energy is supported by an extensive process of institutional and community participation. Participation of the authorities that promote the electrification of these areas (both the private sector and the state), as well as leaders and community representatives is needed to achieve local support.

As a result of the planning processes, a number of projects utilising natural resources were identified. In total, 46 projects were identified of which 9 use micro-hydro, 28 solar photovoltaics (PVs), and 9 small-scale wind systems. These projects have shaped the rural electrification programme. The total cost comes to US$3,344,304 and will bring electricity to 44.2% of the population. The programme has been endorsed by local governments and the process of implementation of some priority projects has begun.

Table 1: Renewable energy projects identified for the rural electrification programme

Table 2: Current and planned electrical coverage through the rural electrification programme

Figure 2: Biodigesters (Photo: Practical Action)

Energy Options No. of Projects

Number of Systems Investment US$

Hydro 10 10 micro-hydro plants 867.629

Wind 8 439 wind turbines 835.729

Solar 28 1038 PV systems 1,640,946

Overall 46 1487 systems 3,344,304

Type of Energy Number of Communities

Electrical Coverage %

Grid-connected communities 27 26

Communities connected with PERSP

46 44.2

Total Communities 73 70.2


30

GENERAL

In Asian countries like China, India, Japan and Korea, rice is a staple food cooked predominantly in conventional

pots. During preparation of food such as rice, porridge, meat, soup or vegetables, the contents of the conventional pot are usually heated to boiling point and then allowed to stew or simmer on the stove for a considerably long time, using up fuel to do so. However, once boiling temperature is reached, the temperature within the pot does not actually rise beyond that. Instead, the energy supplied is used to offset the heat lost (through evaporation, conduction, convection) in order to maintain the cooking pot at a sufficiently

high temperature. This article introduces the Off Fire Reboiling (OFR) pot, a type of cooking pot that can keep the food boiling without the need for additional heat energy. The OFR pot therefore, currently being commercialised in China, aims to increase energy conservation in the household.

The Off Fire Reboiling (OFR) pot: How does it work? The OFR pot, so called “免火再煮锅 [mian huo zai zhu guo]” in Chinese, is designed for saving energy. It consists of a thermal insulating shell which envelopes a

conventional cooking pot. A disc-shaped heat reservoir is installed beneath the metal base of the thermally insulated pot, which is made of a refractory material with excellent heat storage properties. When the OFR pot is placed on the hot stove, the heat reservoir begins to store heat energy so that when the food within the pot has been heated to boiling point, the heat reservoir has already stored a significant quantity of heat energy. At this point, the pot can be taken away from the stove and put on the thermally insulated base while the heat reservoir releases its stored heat energy slowly. In the first tens of minutes, the pot can be maintained at boiling point

GeneralAuthor Zhiliang Wan


1569/52, North sichuan Rd, shanghai, China

The Off Fire Reboiling pot: Improvement to cooking pot design contributes to eco-protection

This article introduces the Off Fire Reboiling pot, an innovative energy-saving cooker design which has been on the market in China since 2005. The main advantage of the Off-Fire-Reboiling pot is that the pot can be taken off the cooking stove as soon as the water boils but the food inside will continue to cook. As a result, the pot can reduce energy consumption for cooking by up to 55% as the food does not need to be on the stove throughout the entire cooking process. Today, an increasing number of manufacturers are producing the Off Fire Reboiling pot to meet increasing demand.

Figure 1: The Off Fire Reboiling Pot (Photo: Zhiliang Wan)

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 11 August 2009

Accepted 08 February 2010


GENERAL

temperature, while afterwards it can be maintained above 85°C for several hours, which is enough to ensure that the food is thoroughly cooked.

The pot is suitable for use in countries where households are accustomed to cooking food such as rice, porridge, meat, soups and vegetables on a daily basis. It is particularly suited to households that use gas stoves.

Current market: Manufacture and price Although the OFR pot was invented in 1988, its commercialisation was only realised in recent years. Now no longer reliant on government support, there are currently 20-30 small and medium unorganised enterprises in China, with a total annual production of 500,000 – 800,000 OFR pots. The OFR pots are put on the market as a common commodity. Advertisements can occasionally be seen on local TV and on the Internet.

The price of most OFR pots varies between 100 RMB (US$15) - 500 RMB (US$75). However, a more reasonable price has been found to be 250% to 300% of the price of a conventional pot i.e. 80 -150 RMB (US$12 - US$22).

Feasibility and goal

In 2007, the countrywide gas consumption for households in China consisted of:— 16.08 megatonnes of LPG for 35

million households— 13.3 x 106 m3 of natural gas consumption

for 36.05 million households— 16.1 x 106 m3 of coal gas consumption

for 33.95 million households.Based on the above data: — 48.24 megatonnes of CO2 emissions

caused by LPG burning (assuming that 1 tonne of LPG generates 3 tonnes of CO2)

— 26.6 megatonnes of CO2 emissions caused by natural gas burning (assuming that 1 m3 of natural gas generates 0.002 tonnes of CO2)

— 16.1 megatonnes of CO2 emissions caused by burning coal gas (assuming that 1 m3 of coal gas generates 0.001 tonne of CO2).

The total emissions therefore, come to 90.94 megatonnes of CO2 per year. Assuming that: 1. The market size for OFR pots in China

is around 40% of gas consuming households (currently numbering 105 million)

2. The gas consuming households use 50% of their consumed gas on cooking rice and other types of food

3. Use of the OFR pot can lead to savings in gas consumption of up to 40%.

The annual reduction in CO2 emissions can be roughly estimated at 7.3 megatonnes of CO2.

OFR pot benefits to users

Let us take for example a household that uses coal gas for cooking, with an average annual consumption of coal gas at 474 m3 per household (considering consumption of 16.1 x106 m3 for 33.95 million). With the above assumptions, the household’s annual reduction in gas consumption is 94.8 m3 of coal gas.

Taking the price of coal gas for households in China to be around 1.10 RMB/m3 (0.162 US$/m3), the household’s annual expenditure on fuel is reduced from 521.40 RMB (US$76.8) to 104.28 RMB (US$15.35).

The purchase price of the OFR pot (on average US$17) can therefore be returned within 1-2 years.

The product has a useful lifespan of between 8-12 years. There is therefore an economic advantage to households buying and using the OFR pot.

OFR pot benefits to manufacturersThe initial investment for a factory with an annual production of 1.5 million OFR pots is about US$4.5m. It is assumed that the manufacturer will expect to make a profit of more than 20% of the product’s selling price i.e. a minimum of US$3 per OFR pot. Assuming operation is at maximum capacity and minimum profit, the manufacturers’ investment could be returned within one year. However the actual profit would depend on the number of pots sold and, considering the initial promotional expenses, the profit may initially be zero, or even negative. As the market for the product grows and the demand increases, the profit would be expected to steadily increase.

Furthermore, the OFR pots have the potential to be certified as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) initiative, enabling manufacturers to gain Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits as additional income.


Zhiliang Wan is a Chinese practitioner devoted to eco-business. self-taught and self-made, Zhiliang propounded the concept of ‘off fire reboiling’ in household cooking during 1986 -1988 which led to the regional commercialisation of the thermal insulated stewing pot in the late 1990s and the Off Fire Reboiling (OFR) pot in the early 2000s.

www.HeDON.info/FKuARead full article and comment* Author profile and latest contact details* Marketing video and photos* OFR Pot website*

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Figure 2: The OFR pot has a thermally insulated container, lid and base and a disc shaped heat reservoir underneath. (Photo: Zhiliang Wan)

Figure 3: Comparison between the OFR pot and the conventional cooking pot

GENERAL

Customer cooking practices and culture

In India the cooking practices vary from region to region. Rice and lentil based stews and soups are more popular in

the Southern parts of India than in the North, where the food is heavier and often complimented with different types of bread.

The different cooking cultures will be an important consideration for your marketing strategy as the pot may be more relevant and acceptable in some parts of India than others.

Indian food is generally cooked for a long period of time over a slow fire. If you are selling the idea of cooking the same food, without the need for a fire throughout the entire cooking process, you may need to raise awareness and convince potential customers that the food tastes as good and

cooks sufficiently as when cooked by the traditional methods.

There is a tendency in urban areas to prefer fast cooking techniques. However, as lifestyles are becoming more and more hectic and individuals work longer hours, my understanding is that a culture of ‘slow cooking’ is emerging. For these urban customers, the OFR pot could combine the benefits of both slow and fast cooking. It could offer a short preparation and supervised cooking time on the fire with a longer cooking time off the fire, which is entirely safe and requires no supervision, while the user is at work.

Current energy profile and fuel useHouseholds in India are generally split between those that pay for their fuel and those that don’t. There are government subsidies available for kerosene and

Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), however these do not suffice to cover entirely the cost of the monthly fuel need for cooking.

Therefore fuel alternatives such as wood or biomass are also widely used. It is important to design your market messaging around the incentives and priorities of your different target groups.

Consumers that cannot afford to pay for the fuel (generally poorer, rural households), are more conscious about the time that is spent either collecting or preparing the fuel (wood needs to be dried in the rainy season).

On the other hand, those that can afford to pay or have no option of being able to collect fuel (i.e. poor or wealthy urban households) are looking for monetary savings through more efficient use of fuel.

A key part of your marketing strategy therefore, depending on the customer profile, will be to explain the monetization of the energy efficiency.

Helpline: Expert response by Pradeep Pursnani

It is great that commercialisation of the OFR pot has been a success in China since 2005. However, as you look at expanding into other markets such as those of India there are some key things to consider when planning your approach that may be crucial for the success of your venture.

The Boiling Point Helpline presents a household energy dilemma or query we have received from our readers, with advice from international experts.

In his article on the Off Fire Reboiling (OFR) pot (see page 30), Zhiliang Wan describes how the energy saving cooking pot has successfully entered the Chinese market and is currently being produced by 20-30 small and medium enterprises with a total annual production of 500,000 - 800,000 pots.

The author has asked for guidance on how this product can be introduced to a different market outside China, namely India. What aspects does he need to consider to develop a good Marketing Strategy as part of his overall Business Plan and what tools can he use?

To send us your own query or to provide your own response to this Issue’s Helpline, contact us at [email protected] or via the Helpline section at www.HEDON.info

Author Pradeep Pursnani email: [email protected]

shell international Ltd, shell Centre, LONDON, se1 7NA, uK

32

GENERAL

Other competing products

Apart from needing to become familiar with your market, your market needs to become familiar with you.

In other words you need business visibility and credibility. In India there is a strong competitor to the OFR pot, the traditional pressure cooker. This speeds up cooking significantly, is currently being produced by well-known Indian household brands and is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Some consideration should be perhaps given to linking the OFR pot to an already established Indian brand that can, through its knowledge of the market, its credibility and brand, help introduce this innovation in the market.

This can also help reduce the size of the investment needed to start the venture and ensure more buy-in from potential investors or shareholders.

Distribution challenges

The complexity and costs of setting up a distribution network for the product will be large, especially if the target is a decentralised, rural market, and can be minimised by utilising existing distribution networks and infrastructure through partnerships.

Furthermore, with such a large potential market, making the product available at a competitive price is key as well as providing a reliable post sales service to increase customer confidence and trust in the brand.

The supply chain will need to be sustainable as well as profitable to get any type of dealers or distributors excited. And on the ground, product promotion or sales teams will be required to ensure distributors or dealers are signed up.

The OFR pot has the advantage of being an off-the-shelf product, which does not require expert installation nor extensive training on how to use it.

There are many stores in the city and local towns that sell pots, pans and cookers. These therefore, would be able to store and sell such a product, in this price range.

Triggers: Affordability, aspiration, healthThe current range of US$15-US$22 is affordable in India at the urban level, but consumers closer to the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) may struggle to afford this product without the option to pay in instalments. Research possible subsidisation or Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) schemes offered by the local government that customers may benefit from. Also consider carbon financing as a source of additional income and the possibility of partnering with micro-financing institutions.

Given my experience in rural India, the OFR pot would compete with other consumer durable products such as a TV or a mobile phone, which are currently more aspirational. As a market entry strategy, you may want to target a centrally located, relatively high income group. The centralised market would help reduce set-up, distribution and transportation costs and income flexibility of the group would help to recover some of the initial, high costs of the venture. Furthermore, successfully attracting such a market, which has easy access to media, would aid in rapid dissemination of the product, rapid brand creation and would help create a product that poorer households can aspire to own – and can own, with the help of suitable financing mechanisms and an inexpensive design.

Highlighting the health and safety benefits of using an open fire for shorter periods each day, is also a good trigger in a

rural context. In an urban context though where LPG is the main fuel used, and consumers are paying for the fuel, uptake of the product may be more rapid.

Useful tools

The SME Toolkit, a programme of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is an online collection of tools targeted at small businesses trying to enter emerging markets. You may find their Marketing & Sales section particularly useful with guidance on market research, advertising, customer services and dealing with competition and also for understanding how marketing fits into the overall Business Planning of your venture.

Profile of the author Pradeep Pursnani is responsible for running the Breathing space Programme. He joined the Foundation after spending three years in strategy and Portfolio for shell Group. He is a Chartered Management Accountant and has a degree in international Business Management. He has a passion for entrepreneurialism and social development.

Considerations for market entry

Market research: Customer, competition, collaborations

Carry out a market study that looks at your different market segments in terms of the demographic, geographic, and fuel use characteristics and cooking practices. Also look at case studies of similar, successfully commercialised products already on the market that have required a similar customer behaviour change. Know your competition and what sets you apart

Demonstrations and pilot projects

Conduct pilot programmes across key markets to get customer feedback on your product, and determine compatibility with current cooking practices and fuel uses. Aim to demonstrate how much fuel can be saved in Indian cooking, validated by an independent lab/entity.

Choose your initial target group

Focus on urban and semi-urban households that are currently paying for LPG as their primary source of fuel and do not have the same affordability issues as some of the more rural and BOP customers. These customers will be more willing and flexible to adapt to changes in cooking practices and to invest in a new product and may create an aspirational product for poorer households.

Form partnerships, increase credibility and minimise costs

Consider a commercialisation joint venture with a local partner that can support the introduction of the product through its existing distribution infrastructure as well as manufacturing capacity in India, saving you import taxes and duties as well as shipping costs. Such a local partner can provide a known, credible brand behind your product.

Product & business visibility

Consider endorsement by a local celebrity chef that will use the OFR pot and introduce it as part of their existing range of products. The OFR pot could also be promoted on cooking shows.

Market messaging Mass media campaign with relevant market messaging for each market segment to raise product awareness is crucial, including: financial benefits, aspiration and health benefits. Consider also tactics like local nomenclature for the product to make it more acceptable.

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Figure 1: Pradeep Pursnani, Business Director for the Breathing space Programme, shell Foundation

Table 1: Considerations for market entry in summary


34

GENERAL

Bhutan is a landlocked mountainous country. It has an area of 38,394 km2 located in the eastern Himalayas

between Tibet in the north, the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam in the south, and Arunachal Pradesh in the east. It has a population of 634,982 with about 70% (of the population) living in rural areas (Office of Census Commissioner 2006). About 57% of the households in the country have access to electricity. However, compared to 96% of urban households, only 40% of rural households have access to electricity. In 2005, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) conducted an extensive survey (TERI 2005) to develop an Integrated Energy Management Master Plan (IEMMP) for the Royal Government of Bhutan. The survey covered a total of 5396 households (about 5% of the total households), including both urban

and rural areas and covering all the dzongkhags (districts) in the country to assess the energy consumption in the residential sector.

Energy consumption in Bhutan’s residential sector The IEMMP study concluded that the total energy consumed in Bhutan’s residential sector is estimated at 191,217 TOE (tonne of oil equivalent). It is the largest energy-consuming sector in the country (DoE 2007) and accounts for 46.8% of the country’s total energy consumption. The major end-uses are cooking, lighting, space heating and cooking fodder for cattle. The industrial sector (which is still in the developing stage) accounts for one-quarter of the total energy consumption. Thimphu, the highest populated

dzongkhag, consumes about 10% of the total energy consumed in the residential sector.

The residential sector’s 91% demand is met by biomass mainly in the form of fuelwood. The remaining 9% is shared between commercial fuels, such as electricity, Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG), and kerosene (Figure 1). The total annual fuelwood consumption in the residential sector is estimated at 0.54 million tonnes. This translates into a fuelwood consumption of 0.85 tonnes per capita per year for the country and 1.19 tonnes per capita per year for the rural areas. Though the average fuelwood consumption has declined from 1.27 tonnes per capita per year for the rural areas (estimated during an earlier Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) study in 1991) the current consumption is still high. To

Energy consumption in the residential sector in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan

The Energy and Resources Institute conducted an extensive survey in 2005 to develop an Integrated Energy Management Master Plan for the Royal Government of Bhutan. The survey covered a total of 5396 households in Bhutan to assess energy consumption in the residential sector. This article presents the main findings of the study and recommendations.

Authors Debajit Palit1 Shirish Garud2

1email: [email protected] 2email: [email protected]

Darbari seth Block, iHC Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003; india

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 18 May 2009



GENERAL

make the consumption sustainable, the government has regulated fuelwood use with each rural household in the country being allotted two standing trees per annum (each measuring approximately 0.9m in diameter) as fuel for household consumption. In spite of the regulation, the high consumption reportedly creates tremendous pressure on the forests with households often resorting to unauthorised collection or purchases of fuel to meet their need.

Cooking alone accounts for the majority of the total residential energy share followed by fodder cooking (Figure 2). One of the reasons for the high consumption is the predominant use of two or three pot traditional stoves built of stone and mud. Only about one-fifth of the rural households use smokeless stoves (Norbu 2001). The traditional stoves come with a single door through which the fuel is inserted and the ash removed, and two to three potholes, each having three raised lumps to keep the pots in place. As Bhutan is a cold country, one pothole in the stove is used exclusively for boiling water and one or two potholes are used for cooking the food. Results of the thermal efficiency measurement using VITA’s water boiling test, carried out in randomly selected households as part of the IEMMP study, indicate that the thermal efficiency of the cookstoves (traditional and improved) ranges between 8% - 18%. The low efficiency can be attributed to the distance of the pots from the hearth, the small effective heating surface of the pot coming into contact with the flame and an unregulated combustion process. Further, in the absence of any chimney, the three lumps in the traditional stoves allow flames to encircle the pots thereby releasing the exhaust directly into its environs. The indoor air quality measurements carried out as part of the same study indicate that the exposure to carbon monoxide emission is also on the higher side (as high as 319 parts-per-million) as compared to international standards. If these results are typical of rural households using solid fuels across the country, then a large percentage of Bhutan’s rural population is currently chronically exposed to high levels of pollution.

Energy consumption: Rural vs. urban householdsLarge variations were observed during the IEMMP study in the choice and availability of fuels in rural and urban households. Fuelwood is the main source of energy for rural households and 96% of the total fuelwood consumption takes place in rural areas. In contrast, a major share of commercial energy, such as LPG, kerosene and electricity is consumed by urban households.

Though under the Seventh Five Year Plan (1992-97), the Royal Government of Bhutan started promoting electricity and LPG as cleaner fuels for various end-use applications, these are not used commonly in rural areas as compared to the urban areas (Table 1). The low availability and high cost of commercial fuels in comparison to fuelwood (which could be obtained at zero cash outlay in rural areas) seems to be the major barrier behind the low penetration of these fuels in the rural areas. Further, TERI study indicates that the landed cost (i.e. including purchasing, transporting, warehousing and distribution) of LPG cylinders in remote rural areas is almost two to three times that of its market price in Thimphu city due to high transportation costs involved in carrying the cylinders. Rural households therefore rely more on firewood, and LPG is used only as a secondary or tertiary source of energy.

Impact of rural electrification on fuelwood consumption The IEMMP study also observed that the electrified households in the rural areas consume almost 23% less fuelwood in comparison to an un-electrified household. The average fuelwood consumption by rural electrified and un-electrified households is 5.06 tonnes and 6.51 tonnes per household per annum respectively (Table 2). This reduction in energy consumption can be mainly attributed to a shift to an electrical device for cooking in the electrified households. A feature worth highlighting is the fact that electricity tends to become an important energy source for cooking once households get electrified, and thus

a high percentage of electrified households (78.6%) in the country use electricity for cooking (Office of Census Commissioner 2006). The higher end-use efficiency of electrical cooking devices (ranging between 78% - 94%) as compared to biomass cookstoves also contributes towards lowering the overall energy consumption. On the other hand, the energy consumption for fodder cooking in un-electrified and electrified rural households shows similar trends (Figure 3). This is because both electrified and un-electrified households use fuelwood in the three-rock open fire device for fodder cooking.

Smokeless stoves: Not a success Smokeless stoves were introduced in Bhutan as early as 1985 when an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 stoves were installed. The stoves were disseminated at zero cash outlay to the users. Even the installation charges to the stove technicians were paid for by the government. However, the stove programme did not achieve the desired success. The major disadvantages of the smokeless cookstoves perceived by the users was the limited room heating and lighting effects due to the limited capacity of the mud body to store and radiate heat. This was a serious drawback in middle and high altitude settlements where adequate heating was a primary necessity (Santner and Jussel 2003). Furthermore, with free dissemination of the smokeless stoves, lack of capacity building and no perceived pressure in terms of fuelwood shortage by the rural populace, the sense of ownership of the stoves and the need to conserve fuelwood through sustained

Cooking (% household)

Fuel Rural Urban

Electricity 28.6 82.2

Wood 75.3 7.6

LPG 20.3 77.1

Kerosene 8.8 9.5

Table 1: Distribution of households as per fuel used for cooking in Bhutan

Figure 1: energy consumption (by fuel) in the residential sector in Bhutan (source TeRi, 2005)

Figure 2: energy consumption (by end-use) in the residential sector in Bhutan (source TeRi, 2005)

4 4

1 2 3

1

2 31 electricity 4.0% 2 Kerosene 2.8% 3 LPG 2.1% 4 Wood 91.1%

1 Fodder cooking 26% 2 space heating 6% 3 Lighting 2% 4 Cooking 66%

source: Office of the Census Commissioner, 2006

36

GENERAL

use of the stoves was absent. Some of the other key reasons for the lack of success of the stove programme are as follows: — Households would modify the pothole

dimensions and fire box of cookstoves to make them more convenient for use with large fuelwood pieces, resulting in a reduction in stove efficiency.

— Although the smokeless stoves can be regulated to have better thermal efficiency, it appeared that in practice rural people did not regulate the airflow, thereby having high fuelwood consumption.

— Use of traditional stoves as the main source of space heating, especially during cold months, by those who could not afford additional heating devices.

— In many households, chimneys of smokeless stoves are dismantled because of perceived fire hazards and in order to use the smoke for drying chilli, fish, and grain, eventually making the smokeless improved stoves much like the traditional ones again.

Conclusion

The high fuelwood consumption in the residential sector, especially in rural areas, has resulted in the country having one of the highest rates of fuelwood consumption in the world. Since cooking is one of the most energy-consuming end-uses, measures to reduce consumption are indispensable. One of the ways to reduce fuelwood consumption is the introduction of energy efficient stoves for cooking. However, experiences from the past indicate that efficiency of fixed mud improved cookstoves deteriorates over time due to materials, construction techniques and maintenance practices. So a sensible approach would be to introduce turbo stoves or gasifier stoves, which have high thermal efficiency ranging from 30% to 40%. As these stoves are metallic, the users will find it difficult to carry out modification of the pothole dimension and fire box. These stoves also have negligible Products of Incomplete Combustion (PIC) and the power output can be regulated by the users depending on their requirement. They can also be mass produced in sufficient quantity, maintaining good quality and at the lowest possible cost for a given design. To ensure

a sense of ownership and sustainability, the stoves should not be disseminated with a hundred percent subsidy as done in the past. The cost of such gasifier or turbo stoves is usually in the range of US$50 – US$70 for the forced draft model and less than US$40 for the natural draft model. With a gross national income per capita of US$4880 based on purchasing power parity (The World Bank, 2008), it is felt that the majority of the rural population would be in a position to procure these stoves. Further, the country has cheap renewable electricity in the form of hydro-power. Given the fact that rural people tend to shift towards electric devices for cooking after electrification, a wider scale programme to shift to electric devices for cooking in the electrified villages will help reduce fuelwood consumption and promote cleaner cooking. In comparison to importing LPG, it would also be much more cost effective in rural areas. The increase in efficiency of fuelwood based stoves or electricity based cooking devices will also bring down or eliminate the carbon monoxide emission from the cookstoves, thereby considerably improving the indoor air quality of rural households. However, the dissemination of energy efficient stoves will have to come with an adequate training package for the users, especially targeted at the women, to ensure stove sustainability and installation support to the extreme Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) population from the government and to ensure equitable coverage.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research carried out by TERI under the IEMMP study for Bhutan. The study was funded by the Department of Energy, Royal Government of Bhutan and Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

References

Doe (Department of energy) 2007. Bhutan energy Data Directory 2005. Department of energy, Ministry of Trade and industry, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu, Bhutan.

FAO, 1991. Master plan for forestry development in Bhutan: Wood energy sectoral Analysis; RWeDP Field Document No 32. Food and Agricultural Organisation, Bangkok, Thailand.

Norbu P., 2001. Fuelwood consumption and alternative energy sources in Bhutan. Bhutan Trust Fund for environmental Conservation, Thimphu, Bhutan.

Office of Census Commissioner, 2006. Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005. Office of Census Commissioner, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu, Bhutan.

santner M., Jussel R., 2003. Rural stoves for Bhutan; interdisciplinary Research institute for Development Cooperation, Johannes Kepler university, Linz, Austria.

TeRi, 2005. integrated energy Management Master Plan survey. The energy and Resources institute, New Delhi, india.

The World Bank 2008, Gross National income Per Capita 2008, Atlas method and PPP.


Debajit Palit is a Fellow and Area Convenor at the Decentralized energy solutions Division in TeRi. He has over 12 years experience in the renewable and rural energy sector especially resource assessment, demonstration and evaluation of renewable energy technologies and policy studies.

shirish Garud is a Fellow and Area Convenor, Renewable energy Technology Area in TeRi. He has about 20 years experience in the renewable energy sector especially in resource assessment, technology development and policy studies.

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Fuel consumption Rural un-electrified Rural electrified

Wood (tonnes/hh/annum) 6.59 5.06

LPG (kg/hh/annum) 46.00 54.00

Kerosene (l/hh/annum) 201.00 323.00

Electricity(kWh/hh/annum)

– 874.00

Table 2: Average energy consumption in Bhutan per household (hh) per annum

Figure 3: Consumption of fuelwood in rural households in Bhutan (source: TeRi, 2005)

source: TeRi, 2005

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Cooking and Spaceheating

Fodder cooking

Fuel

wood

con

sum

ptio

n (k

g/hh

/yea

r)

Rural Unelectrified

Rural Electrified


GENERAL

Background

The ‘Darfur Efficient Cookstoves’ project operates in Al Fasher town, the capital of North Darfur,

approximately 1200 km west-southwest of Khartoum and 550 km west-northwest of An Nahud. The area is an arid and fragile zone that suffers from desertification. Drought has led to minimal vegetation cover and created a serious shortage of firewood. In addition, conflict has contributed to energy shortages. While Al Fasher town is safe for residents and aid workers, most of them rely on non-sustainably harvested fuelwood transported by truck.

Al Fasher is one of the larger towns in Darfur with a population of 228,036 (28,505 households) of whom 198,391 are local residents and 29,645 are internally displaced people. The population is classified into four economic groups;

better off, middle income, poor and very poor. The income of the majority of the population comes from agro-pastoralist activities, which are reliant on a single rainy season annually. Incomes are very low, rarely reaching US$30 a month.

Reason for project

The World Health Organization (WHO) called for a rapid move away from the use of solid fuels for household cooking in developing countries, in favour of liquids, gas and, where appropriate, electricity (Rehfuess, 2006). Acute Lower Respiratory Infection (ALRI) – largely due to cooking smoke from solid fuels – is the largest cause of death for children under the age of five worldwide. This project is providing modern Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) stove sets to low-income families, allowing them to replace their traditional three-stone fires, reduce fuel

expenditure, and reduce the exposure of females to risks associated with collecting firewood from the outskirts of Al Fasher town. The LPG set comprises of a stove, a filled gas bottle, and a Kisra (local sorghum chapatti) plate. The modern stove reduces greenhouse gas emissions by facilitating the switch away from wood and charcoal to more efficient fuels and cookstoves. The switch to efficient fuels reduces indoor air pollution, improves health for the participating families and reduces pressure on forest resources.

Carbon finance as a tool to reduce energy povertyThe concept behind carbon finance is simple: individuals and companies in the industrialised world voluntarily fund greenhouse gas reductions in developing countries to compensate for their own climate change pollution – in this project,

Author Hashim Eltayeb


Pio Yokwan Road, Plot No. 4, street 49 North of Khartoum 3 Club, sudan

Figure 1: Women arriving for LPG training (Photo: Practical Action/ Margaret Gardener)

Using carbon finance to introduce liquefied petroleum gas stoves into Northern Darfur, Sudan

In 2007 Practical Action launched Darfur Efficient Cookstoves’ in Al Fasher town, North Darfur to provide modern liquefied petroleum gas stoves to replace the traditional three-stone fires, through carbon financing. The stove programme is managed by locally organised women’s groups – under the supervision of the Women’s Development Association Network so the project is carried out by the community for the community. So far, over 2416 stoves have been disseminated to households (January 2010), with positive results. Greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced, and reduced indoor air pollution is improving health and quality of life.

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 20 July 2009


38

GENERAL

by supporting the use of cleaner stoves. Burning unsustainably harvested wood and charcoal in inefficient stoves increases global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though LPG is a fossil fuel, the LPG stoves result in considerably lower emissions per unit of cooking energy, producing measurable greenhouse gas emission reductions.

To qualify for finance, it is necessary to have the carbon credits ‘certified’ by an outside body to show that the reduction in emissions is really happening. While simple in principle, the process of gaining third-party certification as a carbon credit project can be quite complicated. Carbon credits are measured in units of one metric tonne of CO2 equivalent, and project developers must prove that these emission reductions are not ‘business as usual’. In other words, project developers must estimate or ‘project’ what emissions would have occurred without the use of carbon finance to support the project. Only emission reductions below this baseline count as carbon credits. An important requirement, therefore, is that the project’s emission reductions must be measurable using an accepted monitoring methodology, and verified by an independently accredited third-party auditor. A second important requirement is that the project is able to demonstrate ‘additionality’ – showing that the expectation of carbon finance helped the project developers overcome otherwise insurmountable barriers that would have prevented those emission reductions from occurring.

In order to be considered for registration by a carbon credit certification body, the project’s baseline measurements, additionality arguments and monitoring methodology are presented in a Project Definition Document (PDD), which follows a standardised format. The project developer is required to submit regular monitoring reports, which are verified by an independent third-party auditor accredited by the carbon credit certification body. Only when the auditor and the certification body are satisfied that the results from the monitoring report are valid, and match the approach outlined in the PDD, can the credits from the project be issued and sold.

In this project, the carbon management company Carbon Clear Limited provided 100% of the external finance required to implement the project, and is sponsoring the costs of PDD development, validation and verification. Without external support the households involved in the project would otherwise be unable to afford the high upfront cost of LPG sets, despite the fact that monthly fuel expenditure is usually lower using the more efficient LPG appliances. The project is being implemented by Practical Action, as part of the organisation’s ‘Improving Access to Services’ thematic area. Carbon funds allowed the project to buy in bulk, provide micro-credit, and give business training to local women’s groups to sell improved fuels, stoves and ovens to poor households through credit. Supported by Practical Action staff, the stove programme is managed by local women’s groups – under the supervision of their network- Women’s Development Association Network (WDAN) so it is carried out by the community for the community.

The project is undergoing Gold Standard Certification based on its ability not only to reduce greenhouse gases, but also provide other socio-economic benefits, such as a substantial reduction in the levels of health-damaging pollutants inhaled by the cook and her family in the kitchen.

Project activities

A baseline study was conducted to determine monthly fuel consumption and expenditure, and to understand the levels of awareness on the dangers of both smoke pollution and environmental degradation. Staple foods were recorded, to ensure that the stove was appropriate for the households in that region.

Awareness-raising sessions were conducted for the project households on the health hazards of smoke resulting from inefficient burning of fuelwood, and the negative environmental impact of fuel gathering, and polluting gases. The sessions then acquainted households with possible means and methods to reduce indoor smoke, and on the safe use of bottled gas.

At policy level, meetings were held with the Ministry of Finance to influence them to take a positive approach to the widespread use of LPG by households in Al Fasher.

Approximately 37 women from the WDAN were trained in the principles of micro-credit, and on how to run the scheme through efficient management, accounting, bookkeeping and monitoring. A structured finance scheme was set up.

The WDANs appoint ‘grantees’ to manage the beneficiaries in groups. Each group of beneficiaries is managed by their WDA grantee and the beneficiary starts by depositing 20% of the total cost and then the remaining balance is paid in nine monthly instalments. The repayment rate to date is 93%.

Media was used to raise awareness of the initiative. All the project activities have been documented through local TV (including three interviews), local radio (10 interviews) and Practical Action – Sudan Communication Unit. One interview was conducted by the National Broadcasting Corporation to bring awareness of the work to a wider audience. The project team made links with potential partners and stakeholders, and the local stakeholder group have two meetings each month to keep everyone informed.

Ensuring the supply chain for fuel is critical to success, and the project team has had to work closely with fuel suppliers. In the first quarter of 2009, a new fuel company was approached to resolve some supply issues. The new supplier is working with the project to improve access to LPG, and reduce the overall price. It will work alongside the WDAN, providing a repayment scheme for the gas bottles to run alongside the repayment scheme for the stoves.

Findings to date

The project has been running since 2007, and already some substantial benefits have been achieved: — Over 2416 stoves have been

disseminated to households to date (January 2010), eliminating the need for people to gather or purchase fuelwood and charcoal.

Figure 2: LPG stove and oven being exhibited by local cook (Photo: Practical Action/ Margaret Gardener)


GENERAL

— Competition between gas companies coming into the area is leading to improvements for the customers. The new supplier is prepared to build a partnership with Practical Action in project implementation, making them agents in the distribution of gas, reducing the price of gas and facilitating the transportation of gas cylinders. Backed with a bank guarantee from Practical Action, it will allow credit on the sale of cylinders which will be paid back in instalments.

Impacts on women

— The social change for women is very clear. Houses are cleaner, particularly in the kitchen, and occupants are also able to stay cleaner. The women who cook feel that they are better respected as a result.

— Women distributing stoves and providing refills have improved distribution networks for refilling the gas bottles, so more people get their bottles refilled on a regular basis.

— The second annual review of the project for 2008-09 indicated that over 11,130 people have benefited directly from the project in terms of learning to use LPG, reducing indoor air pollution, and thus improving family health and saving income on fuel.

Impacts on men

The men in the project area are now completely convinced that this project is highly beneficial, since it influences their daily lives, the amount of money they must spend for fuel, their homes’ cleanliness and their wives’ and children’s health.

The evidence of men’s support is tangible; most of the men support their wives in paying for refilling the gas bottles, and for repaying the loan in instalments.

Moreover, they participate in project meetings; and of the total LPG sets supplied to date, 494 were requested by men who applied for the service on behalf of their family.

They are keen to continue the project services without the support of Practical

Action once the project ends, and to extend the services to neighbouring communities.

Challenges

Transport of fuel

Transport costs increase the price of the fuel as it leaves the terminal. This is exacerbated by groups between the terminal and destination sometimes demanding ‘taxes’ for the safe arrival of the fuel. The increased fuel price makes it still harder for target households, which are already very poor, to meet their loan repayment commitments, and at the same time pay for fuel. Most households have kept up their payments on time, although for a minority, this has not been possible.

Al Fasher is a conflict region, and the lack of security outside of town has, on occasion, led to shortages in fuel supply.

Other issues

Demand is outstripping supply for seed capital to run finance schemes, as many more people want to join the scheme immediately. Too rapid a growth can put great strain on new management unless this growth is carefully managed, albeit some households have to wait a little longer for their appliances. Practical Action and Carbon Clear are exploring options for scaling up the project partway through the current phase.

For those who already own gas appliances, there is a need for access to refilling centres closer to their homes. Without transport, gas bottles are heavy to carry over long distances, and where women are used to buying charcoal from very near their homes, LPG has to be equally accessible or they may revert to using polluting fuels.

To address concerns over household safety when cooks are using an unfamiliar fuel, all households will be supplied with fire extinguishers, ongoing sessions on the safe use of LPG are planned, and a technician will be trained to maintain the stoves.

Future plans

In the coming year, there are plans to:— Facilitate the rotation of the LPG

system to enable the distribution of around 2400 more stoves

— Increase training for WDAN staff to consolidate their capacity in management and revolving finance

— Conduct further awareness-raising and safety sessions

— Make use of the opportunities for advocacy at government level

— Encourage gas companies to promote the use of LPG as a household fuel by low-income households

— Consolidate the sustainability and widening use of LPG.

Full implementation of the project will be led by the women’s groups including planning, distribution of LPG units, controlling repayment processes, monitoring, and dissemination of the impacts of this continuing work.

References

Rehfuess, e., WHO, 2006. Fuel for life: Household energy and health.


Hashim eltayeb has a background in agriculture, and previously worked for the international Fund for Agricultural Development (iFAD), united Nations Development Programme (uNDP) and then for Fellowship for African Relief (FAR). For the last seven years he has been the Quality Assurance Manager for sudan, based at the Khartoum office of Practical Action, sudan.

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40

GENERAL

Sustainability is a key component of development projects implemented by Practical Action Southern Africa.

Micro-Hydro Schemes (MHS) built for communities under the ‘Catalysing Modern Energy Service Delivery to Marginalised Communities in Southern Africa’ project, abbreviated to ‘The Regional Hydro’ project are no exception. This project is funded 75% by the ACP-EU Energy Facility and 25% by Practical Action. In an effort to enhance this sustainability component the implementing team has designed business and financial models that will tackle this issue. These models act at three levels of a micro-hydro scheme – at capital injection level, at operation and maintenance level, and also at expansion or replication level.

This article looks at the financial models that have been adopted for

three schemes in the three countries of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi at capital injection level. Most of them are under trial and results of their impacts are still to be experienced.

The ShareD Model – Chipendeke Power Company Practical Action Southern Africa is setting up a micro-hydro scheme in rural district of Mutare in Zimbabwe in a community called Chipendeke.

The model being promoted is that of a business entity which promotes community investment through sweat equity to promote sustainability and viability of the micro-hydro scheme.

In the Shares for Dividends (ShareD) model, the community contribution is a key component that is treated as an

investment. The model has a capital structure of grant to equity where the equity is the community contribution. This community contribution is mostly in the form of labour and other locally available materials for the construction of the scheme. This is termed sweat equity in the model. The grant portion is the component that is donor funded.

The scheme is designed to operate as a private company comprising of ownership in shares and a management body that will run the operations of the scheme. Shares will be subscribed to, through contributions in sweat equity by Chipendeke community members as shown in Figure 2. .

The expected total cost of the scheme is m68,000 and the community has pledged to contribute 25% of the cost (m17,000). Each share will be worth US$1. There are

Author Chandirekera Sarah Mutubuki-Makuyana

email: chandirekera.mutubuki-makuyana @practicalactionzw.org

P.O. Box 1744, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Figure 1: Builders from the community work together to construct the Chipendeke MHs Weir (Photo: Practical Action southern Africa)

Financial and ownership models for micro-hydro schemes in southern Africa

Micro-hydro schemes are built for marginalised communities in South Africa under a project run by Practical Action Southern Africa called the ‘Catalysing Modern Energy Service Delivery to Marginalised Communities in Southern Africa’ project. The project is designed to enhance Practical Action’s work in the South African community by designing business and financial models for sustainability.

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 20 July 2009



GENERAL

expected to be about 95,000 shares in the company.

The shares will be earned through contributing labour to the civil works of the scheme. This type of labour is mainly in the form of collecting sand, stones and water for building and other general labour tasks. All the work will be value based on the equivalent market worth of each task, and this will go towards the number of shares that each household will earn. Community members decided that since all other work in the area was done per household, shares would equally be earned per household and not on an individual basis. Naturally, the concern would be whether women’s contribution would be recognised if the shares are earned at household level. Therefore, the women decided that shares would be treated just like any other assets in a household and that share certificates will be transferable only after the consent of both the husband and the wife.

In Chipendeke, all contribution is valued. There are five key categories of work in civil works of the Chipendeke MHS, namely collection of sand, collection of stones, excavation of trenches, building and general labour of carrying water for building, cement, pipes and so on. A bill of quantities of sand and stones is known for each scheme and how much this would cost if it were to be obtained from the open market. So a unit cost of obtaining a unit of stones or sand can be calculated, a register is kept at the construction site to record the work that each person or household does on a daily basis. At the end of the construction period, all the work (individual or household) will be tallied and the monitory value will be equivalent to the number of shares that each person or household will have earned.

Most households that want to connect to the scheme will pay 100% connection fees. Only those which the community declares vulnerable and require connection to the scheme will be connected on a grant basis. This will be done in a participatory manner to ensure that vulnerable households get the best benefits from the scheme. Connections will mean payment of tariffs, despite being subsidised, which may burden vulnerable households. The other option is to give shares from the 75% grant to vulnerable

households to assist with income from returns. This is likely to be particularly beneficial to child-headed households and households headed by the elderly.

As much as the company will ensure electricity is connected to households, Chipendeke Power Company will endeavour to connect entities that are commercially oriented.

Still, the company will be able to provide sustainable and viable supply of electricity to the local rural health centre and the local primary school at subsidised rates. Rates for commercial users will be different and higher than household user rates, as will be those for social service centres like the school and rural health centre. This can only happen if they have a solid customer base of able tariff payers. These able tariff payers are the commercial customers referred to above.

In order to operate, the model hinges on having a commercial customer base, but having these commercial customers in a rural setting may be tricky. This is because the ShareD model places emphasis on returns for investors. These returns are the main source of investment funding for expansion and growing of the customer base. From the view of the technical team implementing the project, the MHS project is not treated in isolation. Energy is being treated as an important, integral part of the development plans of the community and plays a necessary and catalytic role in the development of Chipendeke.

So a parallel process where stakeholders take a leading role in other aspects of development is key and already happening.

Practical Action technical unit members have approached A Self-Help Assistance Programme (ASAP) in Mutare in an effort to cultivate a partnership where ASAP is the leading organisation that handles enterprise development at the Chipendeke Rural Service Centre. Mutare Rural District Council (Mutare RDC) and the District Development Fund (DDF) have plans for a rural service centre for Chipendeke in the form of business plots for the type of businesses that can be run in the area. ASAP have funding for enterprise development which enterprises will need in order to use electricity from the scheme.

The Generator Model – Ndiriri Scheme in ManicaThe Ndiriri scheme in Manica district in Mozambique is also another scheme that Practical Action in connection with Kwaedza Simukai Manica (KSM) is implementing. However, with this scheme the capital investment financing model is termed the Generator Model.

In this model, an individual business person, in this case Mr Mufarinya, has obtained a loan from KSM/Practical Action to construct the weir, the canal, the forebay tank and the power house as well as the accessories that go with the scheme right up to generation stage. He will repay this loan from income from households and other customers that he will connect to the scheme. These users will make payments for the use of electricity to Mr Mufarinya, who in turn will service his loan.

In this model, 100% of the transmission and distribution costs are grant financed. 50% of the amount being financed for the generation of the scheme is also a grant to Mr Mufarinya. Mr Mufarinya will only pay back 50% of the total generation amount to a community-managed revolving fund established for this purpose. Households that will want to connect to the scheme will also get loans from the revolving fund and will be required to pay back 50% of this. The other 50% again will come from a grant.

Mr Mufarinya will run his business for profit-making and hence will charge profitable rates. Since he invested in the electricity generation infrastructure, he will own the generation of the electricity of the scheme. However, the transmission equipment will be owned by the community.

The ownership of the transmission equipment and the water is somewhat a tradition in Manica which the team is still investigating reasons for. However, there seem to be indications that this is a control measure to ensure that the individual generation entrepreneur does not become a monopoly. It seems to be a way for the community to retain control over the individual, but these speculations are still to be confirmed.

Figure 2: Ownership and Management structure of Chipendeke MHs

42

GENERAL

The BOT Model – Bondo Scheme in MulanjeThe Bondo scheme is being implemented by Practical Action Southern Africa and Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust (MMCT), through its energy agency, Mulanje Renewable Energy Agency (MuREA). The model that MMCT/MuREA are adopting for the Bondo scheme is an adaptation of the Build, Operate and Transfer model (BOT).

In this model, MMCT/MuREA will build and operate the scheme for the initial two to three years, after which they will transfer the scheme’s ownership to the Bondo community. Community participation is a requirement for Practical Action interventions at the pre-feasibility and detailed feasibility stage, and then comes up again after the commissioning of the scheme, with the community managing and operating the scheme. However, they will do this under the guidance of MMCT/MuREA until ownership and management is transferred completely to the community.

This model works well in communities where ownership issues are not very clear at the beginning, or where ownership cannot be transferred from the onset of the project, or where the investor feels that the community needs more time to appreciate the full benefits of the scheme. It is also appropriate in situations where the community is not willing to participate in the construction of the scheme.

This adaptation of the BOT model allows investors time to concentrate on constructing the scheme using hired labour, in a shorter period of time, or to commence and complete construction while putting the ownership model in place.

In the Bondo case, the micro-hydro technology was foreign to the area except in some instances where tea estates had built and managed them for their tea processing. So a deliberate process of building the capacity of locals to appreciate the technology was undertaken. Baseline surveys and energy poverty assessments showed a strong need for electricity for the development of the Bondo area. They also showed a strong reluctance to invest in the scheme through sweat equity, opting

instead to dissolve ownership to the local chief while the community members, particularly builders are being paid for any manual work done.

The model that emerged in Bondo is that of a community-owned scheme which is represented by a Board of Trustees termed the General Assembly. The responsibilities of this General Assembly resembles that of a Board of Trustees in a Trust and is comprised of seven headmen from the seven villages as well as two representatives from each village (one man and one woman). In total that makes three people from each of the seven villages.

Below the General Assembly is a board that resembles a company Board of Directors, termed Electricity Users Board. This has seven people elected from the seven villages with professional qualifications. For example the Treasurer of the Electricity Users Board has a certificate in Accounts. The Chairperson of the Electricity Users Board is the secretary of the General Assembly so that they can report to the General Assembly in their meetings.

Below the Electricity Users Board are the operators who are the technical people trained to do specific day to day duties to ensure the mechanical and electrical components of the scheme as well as collections of tariffs run smoothly. Over and above this, there is an Advisory Board comprising of the promoters of the technology, MuREA, traditional Chief and District Assembly officials.

Acknowledgements Appreciation and special mention goes to the team members in the three countries who are working on the models and contributed to this article: Lasten Mika, Energy and Environment Projects Manager, Practical Action Southern Africa; John Mthandi, Director Mulanje Renewable Energy Agency; and Domingoes Neto, Director Kwaedza Simukai Manica.

Profile of the author Chandirekera sarah Mutubuki-Makuyana works as the Business Development Advisor for Practical Action southern Africa and has experience designing and implementing financing and business models for micro-hydro projects and monitoring and evaluating their impacts. Her key passions are in exploring financing mechanisms and business options and designs that promote access of poor communities to basic services, such as water and sanitation, housing, energy and waste management services.

Editorial Notes Thanks to Chandirekera for her valuable contribution on the shareD, Generator and BOT financing models for micro-hydro schemes. We invite further submissions on outcomes from their application in projects in different contexts. Please send us your experiences by post or email, or through the website at: www.hedon.info

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GENERAL

Joy Magambo from Ruharo, a small village in western Uganda, is fascinated by the fact that her

husband has broken custom and is now having his meals with her and the children in the kitchen. The change in behaviour by Silil, Joy’s husband, is not due to a mere change of heart but a newly built rocket mud stove. The once very smoky kitchen is now a clean and inviting place that Silil finds a worthwhile place to have his meals. Joy has found this rocket mud stove indeed a delight.

The context

More than 90% of the Ugandan population lack access to sustainable and modern energy. The majority of the people in Uganda rely heavily on biomass fuel (firewood, charcoal) for cooking and very often use traditional stoves in poorly ventilated kitchens. Low access to energy has a disproportionate effect on women, men and children, especially in rural areas. Women in rural areas (and children) spend a lot of time and physical

effort to supply fuel for their households, using their own labour to carry heavy loads over increasingly long distances, at great risk to their health and safety.

The traditional approach to energy in development policy and planning has assumed that energy is gender neutral thus virtually excluding women’s needs. This has thus resulted in little attention given to energy demand characteristics of women and poorly harnessing their potential contributions in energy.

Authors Philippe Simonis1

John Kasagga Kuteesakwe2

Rosette Komuhangi3

1email: [email protected]: [email protected] 3email: [email protected]

P.O. Box 10346, Kampala

Figure 1: Woman in Northern uganda using the rocket mud stove (Photo: Rosette Komuhangi)

Gender and the rocket mud stove: GTZ PREEEP’s experience

This article gives a contextual overview of how women’s energy needs are not prioritised in the traditional approach of energy policy development. It describes how GTZ-PREEEP’s intervention of disseminating the rocket mud stoves has been designed to some extent to avert this problem allowing for the advantages of the stove to directly improve the wellbeing of rural women in Uganda.

PeeR ReVieWeDReceived 18 May 2009


44

GENERAL

PREEEP’s intervention

In line with the energy policy 2002, the Promotion of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Programme (PREEEP) is being implemented on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It works closely with all relevant Ugandan stakeholders, like the Government, NGOs, the private sector, the media, and training and research institutions, on developing sustainable energy policies, improving energy efficiency and widening access to modern energy in rural areas. The objective of PREEEP is to improve access to modern energy services through renewable energies; promote energy efficiency in various sub-sectors in such a manner as to ensure that, at all levels, the baseline conditions and the impacts on men and women are taken into account in order to make it possible to work toward the goal of real equality between men and women.

The rocket mud stove

As one of the interventions, PREEEP promotes the rocket mud stove in rural areas. See table above of how the stove impacts on the life of rural women. With its advantages, the rocket mud stove certainly improves the lives and status of women. GTZ PREEEP has so far disseminated more than 600,000 stoves in 17 districts in Uganda.

Profile of the authors Philippe simonis is an engineer in physics and has been working for GTZ in Africa (Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Morocco, and uganda) since 1982 on different energy and environment projects. He is the coordinator of the German energy Programme in uganda.

John Kasagga Kuteesakwe is a trained expert in energy systems and management from Flensburg university Germany. He has experience in biomass energy. He has worked for GTZ for over six years in promoting Biomass energy Technologies. He specialises in promoting low cost, energy efficient stoves; promoting sustainable charcoal production and licensing systems and also the implementation of the decentralisation of the energy Policy for uganda.

Rosette Komuhangi is trained in communication skills; english Literature and development studies. she has worked for GTZ for four years as a communications officer. she has developed awareness materials to promote the improved biomass technologies that PReeeP disseminates.

References

Malinski, B., university of Oldenburg, 2006. impact Monitoring study: The Rocket Lorena stove Dissemination in Bushenyi District.

GTZ PReeeP, 2010. Annual report 2009.

Editorial notes Thanks to Rosette, Philippe and John for their valuable contribution on rocket mud stoves. We invite further submissions on studies that quantify the environmental, economic, safety-related and ease of operation benefits of the rocket mud stoves as well as their impact on gender issues. Please contact us.

Stove benefit Benefit to women

Firewood savingThe stoves have been tested and proven to be economical in firewood consumption, saving more than 50% compared to the traditional (open) 3-stone fireplace.

Since women and children are the ones primarily involved in wood collection, a reduction in the consumption reduces their workload and the risks involved. According to Britta (2006), as a result of the use of the rocket mud stove, the average per capita consumption of firewood has been reduced by 51%, from 1.02 kg per day to 0.51 kg. Each household with an average of seven members saves 52 kg of firewood per month. This is equivalent to 620 kg per year.

Almost smokeless operationCooking with these stoves greatly reduces the kitchen smoke due to better burning. Moreover, the 2-pot stove has a chimney that eliminates any trace smoke.

An Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) monitoring in the kitchen with the rocket mud stoves indicates that there is a reduction in emissions by up to 69% for carbon monoxide and 85% for particular matter. This therefore means that the woman who spends so much time in the kitchen with the rocket mud stove is at less risk to get smoke related illnesses.

Easy to operateOnce lit, the stove fire does not stop unless firewood feed into the stove is stopped. There is no need of straining one’s lungs to blow air into the stove to fan the flame as it is with the traditional (open) 3-stone fire. This is done by the air chamber below the feeding shelf.

Since women are the ones involved in cooking the ease of operation brings convenience to the women and hence improving their quality of life.

Safe to UseThe stoves are safe-to-use domestic appliances. The shielded fire is screened (out of reach) and therefore less likely to cause burns to children and the user. Moreover the saucepan is inserted into a fire cavity and it cannot topple to cause accidents.

Reduction in kitchen accidents for women and children is a safeguard to uphold their health.

Fast cookingThe stove cooks faster since it generates a hot fire and ensures better heat transfer.

The stove cooking faster is an advantage to women who spend a big portion of the day cooking. The time spent on cooking per day in each family decreases from 4.03 to 2.19 hours (about 45.5%) according to an impact study Britta (2006). The time saved for cooking can be used for productive work, leisure or resting.

Environmentally friendlyThe stoves use less firewood leading to reduction of the deforestation rate.The stoves are less pollutant because of their nearly smokeless operation.

The consequences of environmental destruction including wood scarcity and climate change affect all humanity, but women and children are most vulnerable. Accordingly, environmental conservation protects the lives of women and children. Currently, 715,000 tonnes of firewood can be served per year due to PREEEP interventions in the component of improved biomass technologies (GTZ- PREEEP annual report 2009).

Table 1: stove impacts on the life of rural women

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Boiling Point looks for articles which are written in English, Spanish, French or Chinese, preferably using clear and plain language, and which can be used by other people in their own work. Do not be deterred, however, if you are not used to writing – it is the information that is important – we will review articles, edit them and return them for your approval prior to being published.

Theme articles

Each edition of the journal typically contains 4 to 5 full length theme articles which can include research papers, programme reports etc that are relevant to the theme topic. The next 4 Issues of Boiling Point will be exploring the themes of ‘Energy in Conflict and Emergency Relief’, ‘Energy Markets and Enterprise Development’, ‘Climate Change Adaptation’ and ‘Energy Service Delivery Models’. We encourage you to submit articles on your work on any of these themes at any time of the year. Each edition of the journal also contains a Toolkit. If you are interested in contributing to this then please contact us on the address below.

Interviews

If you feel you or someone from your organization should be interviewed on your work in facilitating energy access to households in developing countries, contact us at the email address below. All interviews will be published on the HEDON website and the best will be selected for publication in Boiling Point.

General articles

We welcome submission of general articles at any time, which can cover any topic. Examples include project/programme updates, technical papers, book/report reviews, conference and workshop reports. Please note: Technology based articles should be focused on the real life application of proven technologies.

HelpLine

Would you like advice from experts on an aspect of your work in household energy? Contact us at the address below with your questions and we will strive to direct you to those who can help. Questions we feel are relevant to a wider audience are selected for publication in the HelpLine section of Boiling Point. HelpLine sections in the past have included dilemmas on marketing and monitoring and evaluation.

Front cover photo competition

HEDON are offering you another fantastic opportunity to get your best image onto the front cover of Boiling Point. We are looking for a full colour photograph for the front cover that illustrates the 4 future themes of Boiling Point. The photo must be: of good quality format and suitable for high resolution colour printing (A minimum resolution of 300 dpi and a higher quality file type i.e. not .bmp); sent to us in it’s original format (not pasted into an MS Word file); credited to the correct person, with a caption if appropriate; owned by the person/organisation entering the

competition; and preferably with a central focal point, a bold composition and rich colours. The editor’s decision is final and the selected photo will win absolutely nothing, apart from the admiration of thousands of subscribers and of course our thanks. For more information please visit www.hedon.info/XBTA

Guidelines and submission dates

We now accept articles and front-cover photo competition submissions for the ‘Energy Markets and Enterprise Development’ issue until Friday 1 October 2010.

Articles can be submitted digitally in a commonly used word processing format, using the Article Template or by post. Articles should be around 2,000 words in length. Illustrations, such as drawings, photographs, graphs and bar charts are essential and should follow the ‘Figure Formatting’ guidelines. All references should be provided in the format given in the ‘References’ guidelines. Articles should also include a 100-200 word summary, a 50 word profile for each author and up to ten keywords that you feel best describe your article. More detailed guidelines and the Article Template can be found at www.hedon.info/BoilingPoint:CallForPapers or via the @HEDON link below. Files can be emailed to the editor at [email protected] or posted to the address below. Final article selection is based on article quality, originality and relevance. Thank you for your cooperation, and please do not hesitate to contact us for any clarification.

Regards,The Boiling Point Team

HeDON Household energy Network PO Box 900, Bromley BR1 9FF, uK Tel + 44 (0) 20 30 120 130 Fax +44 (0) 870 137 2360 email: [email protected]

Call for papersBoiling Point forthcoming topics:— Energy in Conflict and Emergency Relief — Energy Markets and Enterprise Development— Climate Change Adaptation— Energy Service Delivery Models

Boiling Point is now peer reviewed and published quarterly and we are inviting readers to submit articles, papers and news on a rolling basis at any time. So if you feel that you have something to contribute to the wider household energy community on any theme, including the above four, then please read the information below and send us your experiences – HEDON would love to hear from you!


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