Projects: Haiti - 05 • Mali - 08 - 09 • Bolivia - 07 - 09

Kyoto Twist Project in Mali, 2008

Yirimadio, Mali Project with KoZon Foundation and Association of Women Engineers of Mali (AFIMA)

This project is a partnership with three non-profits working together to bring solar cookers to a housing community called Yirimadio in Bamako, Mali, Africa. KoZon Foundation (Stichting KoZon) is based in Holland and promotes solar cooker projects in many countries. KoZon has worked with AFIMA (Association des Femmes Ingenieurs du Mali) an organization of women engineers in Mali to carry out training projects there.

Mali’s per capita gross domestic income places it among the world’s 10 poorest nations. Ninety-five percent of the population in Mali burn fuel wood to supply their daily needs, particularly for cooking. The dependence on fuel wood causes enormous strain on the environment, economy and on individual health. Trees are being cut 20 times faster than they are replaced. Cheap fuel sources are not available and as the forests disappear the lives of the people who depend on wood for cooking become more difficult.

Fuel wood consumption in Bamako, Mali grew from 600,000 tons in 1994 to about 1.2 million tons in 2000, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In an effort to slow this devastating trend, the government of Mali imposed a six-month ban on tree felling and the export of charcoal, in July 2004. This policy increased the price of wood and charcoal by up to 50 percent, putting enormous strain on household incomes. Lacking alternative fuels, people had no options.

The community of Yirimadio has clean water provided for household use. To avoid smoke, residents are required to use only charcoal or gas and not firewood for cooking purposes. On the downside, 80% of the heating value is lost in the process of making charcoal and gas is expensive. From 7 kg of wood only 1 kg of charcoal is produced. This represents a very heavy stressor on the thin forests there. 90% of the available wood in Mali is used as firewood. It has been calculated that 1.3 kg of firewood is used there per person per day. The area is a good choice for solar cooker training. The average number of sunny days per year is 250 days.

The project is described as “integrated cooking”. The trainers taught how to use a solar cooker and also how to start the cooking process with charcoal and then place the heated pot in an insulated basket (retention heat cooker) to finish cooking. This is especially important for the women who use very large pots traditionally (10 to 15 liter) which are larger than can be used in the Cookit solar cooker (cardboard and foil) used in this project. The large pots do fit well in the insulated heat retention cookers. The solar cookers are then used with the 5 liter pots provided by the project to prepare smaller items such as sauces, meat, chicken, fish, soups, groundnuts, cakes, and syrups to go with the meals and also to heat water. Hot water for washing and breakfast grains are prepared the previous night and kept hot in the baskets for the early morning. On days when the sun does not shine, using heat retention cooking baskets requires much less charcoal than if the entire meal was cooked with charcoal. The precise amount of fuel saved will be measured in this project.

AFIMA interviewed and selected 30 widows who live on a small pension, do not work outside the home, and do all their own cooking. Alternates were also chosen to replace any participant who is not able to continue in the project. A two-day intensive training was organized followed by monthly meetings. Participants paid a small fee and agreed to participate in monthly meetings for sharing information and peer support. Fuel use information is collected monthly and the data is used to calculate fuel usage before and after the project and to calculate carbon emissions saved. Formal follow-up interviews will take place at the one year mark to collect information on the participants’ experiences with the project. Since fuel bills are a high proportion of family expense, an additional expected benefit will be a greater amount of a family’s budget available for needs a small widow’s pension cannot readily cover.

This is a summary of the data collected for the first nine months of this project. All the participants used purchased charcoal before receiving their solar cookers and retained heat cookers (insulated baskets). Most of the women report using their retained heat basket cookers every day and the solar cookers whenever the sun shines. Their average fuel cost dropped one-third. The average baseline usage was 3 kg of charcoal per day per household, which is equivalent to 18 kg of firewood (a UN equivalent of X6). The emission factor of 1.8 for firewood was used to arrive at an average annual per household savings of 3240 kg of CO2e.

We are grateful to AFIMA, and in particular Mme. Keita Haoua Niang and Mme. Sidiba Manda Diaby for training and conducting the monthly follow-up meetings with the participants and collecting the data for these calculations. Thanks also to KoZon and to Wietske Jongbloed for organizing this project.

This project funding was made possible by donor support and volunteer efforts.

Thanks to you one and all!

	30	Number of family households in this project
	6.2	Average number of people per household
	30%	Average percent of conventional fuel (charcoal) saved
	$88.90 CAD	Average amount of household income saved per family per year
	$4615. CAD	Total funds for project from Kyoto Twist donors
	$153.83 CAD	Total project cost per family ($4615. divided by 30 participants)
	$30.77 CAD	Cost per year per family, calculated over five years, (based on the expected useable life span of two Cookits and one retained heat basket)
	360 kg/yr	Average expected weight of charcoal saved per household per year (2160 kg when converted to the firewood equivalent)
	3.2 tonnes	Estimated GHG emissions savings per household per year (the firewood equivalent of X6 times the emission factor 1.8)
	$ 10.53 CAD	Estimated cost for each tonne of emissions saved over five years
	480 tonnes	Estimated tonnes of CO2e removed from the global atmosphere by this project over 5 years

Save a tonne, Save a life.