Protect Zambian Forests with Clean Cookstoves

Like many women in Msangula Village of the Eastern Province of Zambia, Maina was struggling to prepare meals every day for her family. This is due to the lack of trees in her village due to deforestation.

Due to this challenge, Maina was unable to to save time to do other productive activities, leading to her losing income and opportunities.

When Kukula Solar Team visited Msangula Village, Maina was among the 50 women who were registered to benefit from an improved clean cookstove distribution project.

She got her stove and since then, her life has never been the same.

In her own words, Maina said, "This is a blessing I never expected... With this improved cookstove that only uses twigs to prepare meals, I now have enough time to do other things, like working in my garden and helping my children with school work. Thanks to Kukula Solar for this gift."

With your continued support, women like Maina are finding an opportunity to save time, and money and improve their health.

We are on a mission to get these life-changing improved clean cookstoves in the hands of families that need them the most so that we can continue to protect our forests and planet.

With over 70% of the population in Zambia living in off grid communities and depending on forest for cooking and heating, its important for more innovative products to reach these communities so as to save not only our planet but families.

With our continued deployment of improved clean cookstoves to protect families, we have reached over 3000 families with improved clean cookstoves that are smokeless and allow families to save time, money and even improve their health.

With your continued support and donation, we are on a mission to getting more improved clean cookstoves to families in rural eastern province of Zambia and we positive that together we will protect our forest, planets and give protections to families in rural villages of Zambia and beyond.

Thank you for your continued support.

The first smell that hits your nose as you walk to the outdoor kitchen of Alice’s popular restaurant in kafumbwe Market is not the scent of her chicken stew, stewed greens and nsima, but smoke. Along with her three children and six employees, Alice cooks food for her customers, numbering seventy to eighty per day on market days, over as many as six stoves from portable charcoal stoves to a traditional three-stone fire. Bags of charcoal and stacks of fuelwood line the back of Alice’s open air kitchen which she uses during the dry season.

Despite the open air, Alice’s eyes burn from the smoke from the open fires and her grandchildren playing nearby suffer from persistent coughs. Alice begins her day at 6 am, not closing the restaurant until 9:30 pm spending more than twelve hours in her smoky kitchen. The black soot lining the kitchen’s tin roof and along its walls is testament to the level of exposure Alice and her family and employees face each day. Of the nine people working at the restaurant and in the kitchen, Alice estimates that at least two people a week visit the local hospital with a health complaint related to working in the heavy smoke of the kitchen. In the wet season, when they have to work in the restaurant’s small, enclosed kitchen the effects of the smoke are even worse.

Alice and her husband opened their restaurant two years ago and she recalls that at that time no one in the family suffered from coughs. She worries about her grandchildren, not only for the health of their lungs, but for the burns that are always a possibility if they should fall in the fire or charcoal while playing in the kitchen courtyard. For Alice and her employees burns are a constant in their lives, with at least one person per week getting burned using the stoves. Alice can quickly outline the various ‘costs’ of the stoves from the cost of fuelwood (10,000 k/bundle) and charcoal (17,000 k/bag) used at a rate of about one bag per week to the constant worry about her and her family’s health.

Kukula Solar is providing to Alice both an efficient, institutional stove and a ‘super pot’ – one of the newly designed efficient pots. As Alice began to cook a new batch of chicken stew in the new ‘super pot,’ she called her daughter over after only a few minutes to look at the chicken. “Look how fast it’s cooking,” she exclaimed to her daughter. Still not quite sure if the ‘super pot’ was a gift or merely brought out for demonstration, Alice joked that she would distract the Kukula Solar Team team with a good lunch so that ‘they’d forget about the super pot’ and leave it behind for her to cook with! She’s looking forward to the improved efficiency of the new stove not only to save time and money now spent on fuelwood and charcoal, but even more importantly to improve the health of her family, her employees and herself.

Kukula Solar wiped my tears the day they brought me one of their cook stoves. Previously, I had been cooking from a fireplace where we used lots of firewood. The smoke that emanated from the fireplace affected my health and that of my children. My eyes were sore and my children developed cough. The usage of the fireplace also made me spend lots of money on firewood and more time on cooking. This left me with little time for my business and income loss. With Kukula Solar’s intervention, I now do not have to spend my little money on firewood. I also do not use the whole day to cook. My children are now attending school through the savings I have made. Please donate to empower Kukula Solar to distribute clean cook stoves to boost the health and incomes of women and their households!

Thank you

Every day, families living in rural communities of Africa frequent forests to fetch firewood for their cooking. This results in the cutting of trees and leads to land degradation, and deforestation and also affects our environment.

We have been working with rural communities in Zambia's Eastern Province to protect our forest by promoting the use of improved clean cookstoves that saves our trees, money, and also time.

To date, over 10,000 clean cookstoves have been distributed, thanks to you our donors, and supporters who make this a reality.

We invite you to consider donating to our project so that we reach more people with these life-changing products and continue to save our forests as we protect our planet.

Thank you