Breath of fresh air; a clean cooking solution for Africa

Smoking kills

Cooking smoke is a severe hazard to both the individual and the environment in so many ways. Annually, approximately 4 million people worldwide die from the effects of household air pollution caused by smoke from cooking. The same cooking fumes make up 15% of all global human C02 emissions. Every year in Africa 4 million hectares of forest are destroyed for cooking fuel, upon which poor families spend 25% of their income. Frequently women spend hours searching for fuel, putting themselves at great personal risk. These costs in both time and money hugely contribute to ongoing poverty in Africa.

Keeping it clean

Lesotho based company African Clean Energy, working with mobile operator Vodacom, have found a technological solution to this extremely complicated problem. African Clean Energy’s innovative new product, the ACE 1 Solar Biomass Cook Stove, has the power to save millions of lives, reduce poverty and slow deforestation.

No smoking

The Ace 1 Cook Stove is versatile, smokeless and safe. Working off a solar charged battery, a fan blows oxygen into the fire inside, dramatically increasing the temperature. The fuel is gasified, meaning combustion is at its most efficient and no smoke is released. This method uses 70% less fuel than traditional cooking methods and minimises C02 emissions. The ACE 1 also has outputs to power lamps and charge mobile phones. This is incredibly important, as many people rely on mobile payment systems, indeed it is largely through micro payments on Vodacom’s M-Pesa mobile money that low-income families are able to afford the ACE 1. The mobile operator has also donated ACE 1 Cook Stoves to rural communities in Lesotho where Vodacom cell towers are situated.

Ace results

By March 2016 African Clean Energy had sold over 35,000 ACE 1Cook Stoves, positively impacting nearly 40,000 people with an aim to reaching 3.4 million people before 2020.

“I used to cook with kerosene and the house would get so smoky my daughter, Masupha, would be coughing all the time. Also, so many people I know have burnt their houses down like this. It would make me very worried but there was no choice. My ACE 1 cooker has changed my life! The house smells so much better now and I know I’m not putting my child, or myself, at risk.”

Nthabiseng Majoro, Lesotho