BURN stoves; a solution to a clean cooking

Burn Manufacturing Tanzania Limited has devised energy-sufficient cookstoves ‘Jikokoa’ which uses 75 per cent less charcoal and firewood as compared to traditional cooking cookers.

Speaking on the sidelines of the two-day Clean Cooking Conference which started in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, Burn Manufacturing Tanzania Limited’s Country Manager, Mr John Mtui, said the innovation is part of short and long-term solutions on the shift to clean cooking energy.

“Our stoves are designed in a way that they use less charcoal and firewood compared to conventional cookers. They emit little smoke and thus have little impact on the environment and health of users,” Mr Mtui explained.

He elaborated that the stoves are sold at different prices at its stores in Dar es Salaam and Arusha and have the capacity of cooking food for between eight and 100 people depending on the preference of a customer.

“Our cookstoves save money since they use less charcoal and firewood and they protect the environment and health of users since they emit little smoke.

“We are also conducting research on energy saving electricity cooking which we plan to introduce in the market by March, next year,” he explained.  

BURN whose African headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya, the company started operations in Tanzania in March, this year, and response from customers is positive, he stated, noting that plans are afoot to establish warehouses in Mwanza and Mbeya.

Mr Mtui further said that the company is eyeing to establish a plant for manufacturing the stoves in Tanzania since it currently imports the cookers from Kenya.

“Importing the energy-sufficient stoves from Kenya has implications on costs to final consumers since they are subjected to import taxes,” he remarked.

Apart from Tanzania, the company has operations in over 30 countries including Kenya, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nigeria as well as Mozambique, Rwanda, Somali, Ivory Coast in addition to Senegal, and Ghana with sales over 2.3 million stoves.

Available data shows that 63.5 per cent of the households in Tanzania use firewood as main source of cooking while 26.2 per cent use charcoal.

Only a fraction of the population at 5.1 per cent use Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as a source of cooking while 3 per cent use electricity. The figures show that 2.2 per cent use other sources of energy.