Co-Designing a Stove Prototype for Rural Communities

Background

• Over the last 10 years, the fastest growing cities of Mozambique (Maputo, Beira & Nampula) have seen such a growth in the consumption of charcoal, that the prices have increase by more than 200%.
• This has raised concerns about the availability of biomass resources, and market ability to meet growing demand in the next 25 years, especially for low-income families.
• In the southern part of the country, the capital Maputo is currently dependent on charcoal produced in areas up to 400km away, all because no more forests are left in the province, capable of meeting demand.
• While studies have shown that families who traditionally consume charcoal would be better served with LPG and at times have shown willingness to make the change, high prices of initial purchase remain a key obstacle for mass scale adoption of LPG. In rural areas this fact is aggravated by the lack of infrastructure and distribution channels.
• These barriers to LPG adoption mean that communities, especially in rural areas, are unable to directly transition from the use of biomass to LPG. To address this, the Acc Lab proposes that an additional step must be added- one in which the focus is not on eliminating the use of biomass, but in making it significantly more efficient, and subsequently reducing its consumption.
• Key players in private sector & government have begun exploring alternative business models and equipment to address this, but to date, these have yet to yield sustainable and scalable results. Our initial research of the local market indicates that existing cookstove models are either still too expensive for rural communities, or affordable but lacking in efficiency and quality.
• The overall objective of UNDP Accelerator Lab is to partner with a cookstove design organization to develop improved designs for affordable, efficient cookstoves for both charcoal that respond to the needs of our typical beneficiaries and address the gap in the market.