Capacity building on construction of institutional cookstoves – WACCA Camp2- 2017

From March 27 to 31, fifteen stove producers from the 5 Anglophone countries in ECOWAS will convene in Accra, the capital of Ghana to participate in the capacity building on institutional cookstoves (ICS) construction.

At the global level, 2.6 billion people still depend on traditional cookstoves or open fires for cooking and heating their homes (World Energy Outlook 2012). This results in 4 million premature deaths per year globally, mainly women, who bear the burden of cooking and their infant children (under 5) due to indoor-air pollution (WHO 2012). Additionally, this prevalent use of biomass-based fuels for cooking using inefficient stoves such as the three-stone fire has been identified as one of the leading cause for deforestation, which is one of the main drivers for climate change.

At the ECOWAS regional level, majority of households (about 80%) still rely on traditional biomass as their primary cooking fuel. In several countries in the region, biomass based fuels (firewood and charcoal) represent more than 90% of the household energy needs especially in rural and peri-urban areas.

In response to these challenges, ECREEE and its partners initiated the West Africa Clean Cooking Alliance (WACCA) initiative launched in October 2012 to support a wide distribution of efficient, affordable, sustainable and safe cooking fuels and devices to the ECOWAS population. Through ECREEE, WACCA is therefore organizing this hands-on workshop to allow cookstove manufacturers to learn from one another. Under the guidance of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial research, (CSIR) Ghana, and three resource persons, 5 days training session is being organized to strengthen the technical and entrepreneurial skills of the artisans invited. This training is the second of a kind relying solely on south-south knowledge-sharing where 100% of the participants and trainer are all from the ECOWAS region and are from one core group of the value-chain. Another innovation is the fact that only participants from English-speaking countries are attending this workshop in order to remove the language barrier. From the perspective of ECREEE organizing team, these “changes allow the training to be laser-focused. Small is efficient, in this case”!

This capacity-building training will help WACCA reach its objectives of bringing clean, safe, affordable cooking energy solutions to the entire ECOWAS population by 2030. At the end of this intensive five-day training, the ECREEE team hopes “participants are able to see the possibilities out there using modern innovation in cookstove production as a case-study and living proof of success in the industry’’. The training is designed to be fluid; organic and interactive while topics covering all aspects of stove production from material sourcing and equipment selection to quality control and dissemination.

This training also is a testimonial to WACCA’s strategy of leveraging synergies as it will be organized in collaboration with the Ghana Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GHACCO) and the Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves. WACCA is grateful to the Austrian Ministry of Environment for funding this activity, which is a big step toward ensuring a viable clean market in the ECOWAS region.

The workshop will also be used to sensitize participants on sustainable forest management and sustainable bioenergy systems (biochar stoves, biogas and wasteto-energy systems).

Download Press Release here.

For more information about this workshop or about WACCA in general,please contact John Yeboah, coordinator of WACCA, at jyeboah@ecreee.org.