The Consequences on Girls and Women

Women disproportionately endure the negative consequences of traditional cooking practices. Lack of clean cooking prevents many women and girls from accessing education, earning a wage, or starting a business that would deliver financial autonomy.

In Uganda, like in several parts of the world, they typically have little say over household spending, with other purchases prioritised over clean cooking devices. Under-representation of women within executive institutions means that clean cooking also remains low on the political agenda. This is what we continuously see in the school setup. The kitchen is unfortunately the least of their priorities.

As per the latest publication from the International Energy Agency, “A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All”, the gender equality, health and time-savings benefits of universal clean cooking are immense. Their analysis shows that “there are 2.5 million less premature deaths caused by the fall in air pollution toward 2030, and the average household saves on nearly 1.5 hours a day from the switch, which can instead be spent pursuing education or work. The time-savings from universal access to clean cooking are roughly equal to the working hours put in by the entire Japanese labour force in 2022”.

Dedicated Environmental Activists

Being a Project Developer implementing a carbon project, means a lot of hard work, efforts, and high risks are taken, especially when working in Least Developed Countries. On a daily basis we struggle to fix problems, and against the odds we overcome all sorts of challenges, in the field, and at a macro level, with the structural changes the compliance and voluntary carbon markets are now undergoing.

It still does not stop us to drive significant climate change, community, resilience, food security, social and economic empowerment to many of the most vulnerable and forgotten people and remote places on this planet.

About 90% of the total primary energy consumption in Uganda is generated through biomass: firewood (78.6%), charcoal (5.6%) and crop residues (4.7%). Every year 19,700 people die as a consequence of using 3-stone fires for their daily cooking activities. These traditional stoves have been associated with extremely low efficiency with 93% of the energy generated being lost during cooking. Not only does it result in indoor and outdoor air pollution, but also contributes to regional deforestation and forest degradation - from 1990 and until 2010 more than 39% of the existing forest disappeared.

When you purchase carbon credits from Simoshi, you not only compensate for your unavoidable emissions, but you also make this project activity a reality - it would have never happened in the absence of money generated through carbon credits sales!

Your contribution positively impacts the school finances, reduces air pollution and health related problems for children and cooks, decreases the deforestation impact, reduces CO2 emissions, while also empowering women and children in Uganda. Visit our “Offset” page to learn more how to take action.

Grant Award - SNV & Embassy of Sweden

We have great news to share today, as Simoshi has been the recipient of a grant award from SVN and the Embassy of Sweden, for the Results Based Financing funding mechanism to scale the supply of institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to 60 new schools in Kampala, Wakiso and Mukono districts.

SNV Netherlands Development Organization in collaboration with Makerere’s College of Engineering, Design, Art, and Technology (CEDAT), and Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU) is implementing a four-year (2021-2025), Inclusive Markets for Energy Efficiency in Uganda (IMEU) project. This project is funded by the Embassy of Sweden (EoS) in Kampala, Uganda.

The project aims at contributing to the development of sustainable and inclusive markets for appropriate energy efficient (EE) products and services for households, agribusinesses, commercial facilities, and social institutions in Uganda.

New joining schools will benefit from 10-year free stove maintenance as part of the Project Activity registered with the Gold Standard.

Such support will be exclusively directed to all all new schools joining Simoshi’s Project Activity, to reduce the cost of the IICS by 40%, making energy efficiency more accessible and affordable, as schools move away from using traditional 3-stone fires for their daily cooking needs.

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Food Portions Are Small

It is heartbreaking to see schools struggling to buy food, as prices are rising, and firewood becomes more expensive by the hour. By helping schools move away from traditional 3-stone fires, the school saves at least 50% on firewood purchases, meaning that money saved can be used towards supporting the purchase of food. Per year, a school with 800 day scholars can save up to USD 1,000 from firewood NOT purchased, as they use the institutional improved cook stoves to prepare their daily meals.

When you choose to offset you carbon footprint, remember you are not only supporting the reduction of CO2 into the atmosphere and the deforestation rate. At the same time, you are also giving a helping hand to schools, to improve the quality of life of children and their families in Uganda.

Posho and Beans

That is the most popular dish served at all schools in Uganda. Posho is maize flour, also known as polenta in some parts of the world. Unfortunately, this is a monotonous diet, and aside from becoming a boring menu for most children, it has little nutritional value that can sometimes result in some level of malnutrition.

Contributing towards moving away from traditional 3-stone fires to institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) when cooking, means schools can used the money saved from firewood not purchased, to increase food portions and buy a variety of other foods, such as rice, matooke (steamed bananas) and greens. Remember, an average school with 800 pupils can save between USD 700 to USD 900 per year when moving away from traditional cooking practices (depending on the number of boarding and day scholars).

Term III of 2023

The last school term for this year has now started and children will be busy preparing for their final examinations. As per the official government calendar, schools will close their doors on the 1st of December. Then, a well deserved rest awaits for two full months.

For us, no rest during the school holiday because we will be taking advantage of closed kitchens to make all the free improved cook stove repairs. And while these coming two months come to an end, we continue visiting new schools that call us to assess their kitchens and see how we can help them to move away from their traditional cooking practices.

No Children Should Go Hungry

Although Simoshi’s Project Activity registered with the Gold Standard achieves 9 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it does not monitor SDG2 “Zero hunger”, the global issue of hunger and food insecurity that has shown an alarming increase since 2015, a trend exacerbated by a combination of factors including the pandemic, conflict, climate change, and deepening inequalities.

Nevertheless, the indirect contribution the project makes towards this goal comes through the monetary savings a school achieves when moving away from a 3-stone fire to the energy efficient cook stoves. A school with approximately 800 day students will save $1,200 in firewood not purchased.

This means more money can be spent in urgent needs such as food. The role of school feeding their students is crucial. It results in increased enrolment and improved retention. It also improves cognitive abilities and learning capacity, and reduces absenteeism. The meals provide nutrients necessary for brain development, reducing anaemia and stunting, and increasing immunity. These results are even more pronounced for girls and children living in poverty, defined as living on less than a dollar a day.

Traditional vs Improved

So much has been written and said about using traditional 3-stone fires for cooking. But an image is worth a million words, and this video clearly shows the drastic difference when using an institutional improved cook stove (IICS). Today, more than 40% of the population in Africa lives without access to electricity, and 70% without access to clean cooking fuels. The socioeconomic impacts of this are huge.

The most obvious when watching this video is, at first sight, is the quantity of firewood used between one and the other. But there are many benefits that can be enjoyed when moving away from traditional cooking practices. For example, do you know what contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, mainly women and children?

Inhaling hazardous smoke from traditional stoves and open fires causes millions of premature deaths annually, disproportionately affecting women and children. The arduous task of collecting firewood also hinders educational and employment opportunities and strains natural resources – compounding costs for vulnerable populations.

At Kitebi Secondary school we can see both cooking systems in use as the improved cook stoves are being repaired during the holidays.

Testing Cohort 2016

Every year we collect from the field all the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) of 30 litres capacity that were installed in different schools back in 2016. We follow the Water Boiling Test (WBT) protocol to ensure the thermal efficiency is still performing at its highest. Imagine these IICS have been in use for the past 7 years. Nevertheless their thermal efficiency is above 27% because we repair them every year. If we didn’t, then their combustion chamber would be totally destroyed, and their thermal efficiency would go down to 10%, consuming a lot of firewood just like a 3-stone fireplace.

Prior the testing exercise taking place, all the equipment used is calibrated at the Uganda National Bureau of Standards. The firewood was purchased with 6 month in advance, to ensure the optimal water moisture content.

In The News @ ACW2023

We are incredibly grateful for the latest blog post written by Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy and Margaret Kim, CEO of Gold Standard as a result of their participation at the Africa Climate Week 2023.

Our work with schools in Uganda is mentioned as an example of how the voluntary carbon market can contribute not only to global net zero, but also to support development objectives and deliver the much needed revenues to get the technologies deployed.

“Africa's carbon market offers a powerful means to address climate change and uplift communities. The tangible benefits seen in the projects in across Africa highlight the potential of carbon credits, both environmentally and socio-economically. As regulations evolve, governments have the opportunity to address current challenges and meet national priorities by crafting policies that prioritise local needs and ensure sustained advantages. By championing local expertise and fostering shared benefits, Africa can realize the carbon market's dual promise for its people and the environment”.

Combating Energy Poverty

We often read many articles and reports on household stoves and energy poverty. But we forget to acknowledge that schools are also cooking with traditional 3-stone fires, and these are the largest and most concentrated existing firewood consumers on the continent. Just imagine saucepans that range from 30 to 600 litres capacities, a diameter of 1-meter wide, like a truck tyre!

And someone has to prepare the meals every single day, under such unhealthy and unsafe conditions. So how do we support decarbonisation that benefits the people most at risk from energy poverty?

Although electric pressure cookers are not an option available at such scale right now for institutional consumers, we do have the opportunity to help schools move away from traditional cooking practices to energy efficient stoves with institutional improved cook stoves (IICS).

By default, the use of an IICS provides a decent working environment to all those involved in the cooking activities - usually women. Because the IICS are notonly cleaner and safer, but also faster for preparing meals, it gives cooks the opportunity for leisure and using that extra time to pursue activities in their own interest and comfort.

During the year 2022, Simoshi directly impacted 158 women in the kitchen who benefitted from the use of an IICS and support provided during the training sessions.

Term 2 Comes To An End

It’s an official wrap for Term 2, children, teachers and cooks can go home to get their well deserved rest. Schools will be opening their doors once again for the last term of the year, starting on 18th of September and finalising on the last week of December.

For us, it is a busy maintenance period of 3 weeks as we repair all institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) free of cost to all schools. Best of times as kitchens are not in operation.

We prepare the hectic schedule in advance with our partner Uganda Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove) to make sure we are continuously improving the IICS quality and all its components. Here below we share some pictures of our meeting earlier this week, with Rehema and Crispus from Ugastove, and Robert and Virginia from Simoshi. We discussed the metal gauge of sheets used and durability of chimney pipes and stove connectors.

Robust Sustainable Impact

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) released the second half of its Carbon Core Principle’s (CCPs) guidance to address carbon credit integrity. With the aim to bolster different activities pushing towards the common net-zero goal, the ICVCM’s new guidance should hopefully usher in high-quality across the voluntary carbon market, and we welcome these with open arms.

The IC-VCM has grouped the CCPs into three categories, with Sustainable Development being one of them. It has been defined as social and environmental safeguards, and avoid locking-in technologies or practices that are incompatible with reaching net zero GHG emissions by mid-century.

Identifying low-quality carbon credits in the market is an essential step to ensuring that VCMs achieve their potential impact in combating the climate crisis. This will reduce the risk to buyers of purchasing low-quality credits, and provide clear guidance to standards to help them improve their processes to reduce the proportion of low-integrity credits in the market. It will finally put our efforts in the spotlight with the 9 Sustainable Development Goals achieved since the first school join the Project Activity back in March 2016.

9 SDGs Achieved

Our Project Activity achieves 9 Sustainable Development Goals, with individual indicators that are continuously monitored, quantified and verified by the Gold Standard.

Once Upon A Time....

Over a half billion sub-Saharan Africans do not have electricity and over 80% rely on traditional biomass, i.e., charcoal, wood, and kerosene, for cooking, and the region is falling further behind in achieving the fundamental SDG7 energy access goal of clean-cooking solutions for all.

22,000 schools in Uganda still use 3-stone fires to prepare their daily meals.

Some few schools make a HUGE effort to buy institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). Unfortunately, the cooking sector is unregulated, and schools fall into the hands of unprofessional stove manufacturers that:

  • do not test their stoves following international standards to ensure their product is fuel efficient and

  • do not offer any after sales support or maintenance to the stoves.

The pictures below are the typical sad scenario we find in school kitchens: destroyed stoves, that once upon a time, used to be a decent component of the kitchen environment.

Just like any other product in life, improved cook stoves also need on-going repairs. Imagine these are under fire every day, sometimes in the evenings for those boarding schools. Fire eventually destroys the firebox chamber of the IICS, and if these are not regularly maintained, schools end up consuming a lot of firewood, just as they did before with their traditional 3-stone fires.

One amazing feature at Simoshi, is using the revenues accrued from the sale of the carbon credits, to support all participating schools with free IICS annual maintenance, for a period of 10 years. We have been providing this support since 2016 when we first installed 4 IICS at Gangu Muslim Primary School.

Maintenance events include work on the insulation bricks, or on the metal body and chimney pipes. The first item that gets damaged from the flames is the combustion chamber, so it is a must that every IICS has to be plastered at least once a year, with the special insulation plastering mix, to ensure all insulation bricks are intact and in place, as shown in the pictures below.

Improved Cook Stoves Hold The Key to Education

Amy Herbert from Monarch University Australia is today our guest writer, and shares her thoughts on how education in Uganda can be positively affected though Simoshi’s kitchen intervention:

“Simoshi provides affordable Institutional Improved Cookstoves (IICS) to schools in Uganda, creating carbon reductions through reduced firewood use. These carbon reductions generate credits that are sold on international marketplaces to businesses and individuals looking to offset their carbon emissions. While most carbon credits help reduce climate impacts, Simoshi goes a step further by simultaneously providing broader additional benefits to children and their education in Uganda, contributing to the achievement of the United Nations' fourth Sustainable Development Goal: Quality Education.

It is well-known that breathing in smoke daily from traditional three-stone cooking methods is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, leading to various negative health effects, including a weakened immune system. By using IICS, smoke pollution in schools has drastically reduced or been completely eliminated.

Hasadu Kilabira, the Director of City Junior School, mentioned that the smoke was significantly affecting the staff and students due to the school's relatively small size. However, after installing the IICS, they managed to eliminate the smoke. As a result, the health of teachers and students has improved, leading to fewer absences and allowing children to spend more days learning, thus enhancing the quality of their education. Additionally, smoke-free classrooms improve students' visibility of teaching boards and minimize disruptions during teaching periods, which are crucial factors in helping children acquire and retain knowledge.

Hasadu Kilabira also reported that since implementing the IICS, their school only uses one truck of firewood per term, compared to three trucks when they relied on three-stone fireplaces.

Similarly, Ddamulira Roberts, a cook at Kabowa COU primary school, stated that they reduced their firewood use from two lorries per term to one lorry every two terms, resulting in a 50% reduction in firewood consumption. This not only mitigates deforestation and reduces carbon dioxide emissions, but also saves schools hundreds of dollars each term, which can then be allocated to educational resources for the students like new books, writing materials, infrastructure, and computers.

Children cannot learn effectively without a clean environment and the necessary resources. Therefore, the next time you decide to offset your carbon emissions, consider purchasing your credits from Simoshi. By doing so, you will not only contribute to the environment but also invest in the lives of Ugandan children, ensuring their access to quality and safe education”.

Many Make It Possible

Last week we installed 3 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) at Hillstone Primary School in Mbuya. This delivery was a big challenge to us, because the school is only accessible through a pedestrian walk. No trucks or cars can access the kitchen. And this meant we had to carry the 3 IICS with the help of strong men, for over 100 meters.

Each IICS can weight well above 80 kilos, depending on the size of the saucepan it was made for. Big IICS can only be delivered using cranes. Luckily this time around, the IICS were small enough to make it without the usual set up.

And the good will of those at school ready to give a helping hand, to make sure the school cooks and children can start enjoying from a clean and efficient kitchen environment.

Improved Cooking And Carbon Finance Explained

Last week we told you about TeamWorks 2023 and we wanted to start sharing the amazing work that was prepared during the month of July by our seven students around the world.

The video here below was created by Stefan Makhoul and Junyi Liu. These are their views on how Simoshi is impacting the lives of children in Uganda and the benefits that are enjoyed when someone choses this project to offset their carbon footprint.

TeamWork International Virtual Programme 2023

TeamWork is an online programme offered by the University of Warwick (UK), Monash University Australia, Monash University Malaysia, Cornell University (USA), Hong Kong University, University of Toronto (Canada), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), IIT Delhi (India) and Eutopia University

TeamWork is designed to help students develop their international experience, intercultural and communication skills, whilst organisations benefit from having a team of students apply their perspectives, global outlook and academic abilities to your specific project or challenge.  

Now in its fifth year, TeamWork has gone from strength to strength, connecting organisations with multi-disciplinary teams of students from Warwick and other top universities around the world. 

Simoshi has once again participated, hosting 7 students from all over the world, during a 4-week part-time virtual project that run from 26 June – 21 July 2023. During this time students created educational campaigns and marketing strategies on various social media platforms, with the expectation to increase traffic and raise awareness on the benefits of Simoshi’s Project Activity when offsetting your carbon footprint.

We would like to thank Yun Wirawan, Sharif Hussein, Precious Omofia, Amy Herbert, Stefan Makhoul, Junyi Liu and Dau Hung for their time and dedication. Stay tuned as we will soon share their amazing work, which includes articles on LinkedIn and reels on Instagram.

Stone Age Cooking

The title is annoying, but this is how over 20,000 schools in Uganda are still cooking like. We don’t need to travel far from the capital Kampala. Actually, the pictures below were captured in a school located in the town centre.

Moving up the energy ladder means moving away from traditional 3-stone fires to energy efficient cook stoves (IICS). Schools are still consuming firewood for their cooking needs, but using it efficiently, saving at least half.

This is a great improvement, not only generating an amazing financial impact on the school finances - an average school of 800 children can save USD 900 on firewood purchases per year - but also having a positive impact on the cooks health. Because firewood consumption is reduced by half, smoke is also greatly reduced, from less combustion taking place, together with the IICS design that pushes residual smoke outside through the chimney pipes.

Schools Are Reducing Firewood Consumption By Half

World Resources Institute’s latest Global Forest Review is now out. Unfortunately news are not getting any better, but it is important to continue reminding all our readers and buyers of carbon credits that yours and our contribution to stop deforestation is meaningful.

We lost 10.2 million acres of primary forests in the tropics globally during 2022.

The bad news, human-caused deforestation increased by 10% compared to last year as per the latest report.

Schools make an important contribution to this alarming issue, as they move away from using traditional 3-stone fires to using energy efficient cook stoves, because firewood consumption automatically reduces by half. Keep making YOUR contribution when supporting Simoshi’s Project Activity by choosing the right carbon offsets. Below is just one of the many examples that depict this significant change in the school kitchens in Uganda.

During the year 2022 alone, 95 schools reduced 11,951 tons of firewood. That’s the amazing impact we made together on SDG15.