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Mirte stoves in Ethiopia by Emma Judge et al.
[top] [end]IntroductionIn Ethiopia, one of the most popular staple foods is injera (household bread) which is a large flat pancake eaten by the majority of Ethiopians at least once a day. Injera baking is the most energy-intensive activity in Ethiopia. It accounts for over 50% of all primary energy consumption in the country and over 75% of the total energy consumed in households. The food is so popular that the average family burns around 20 kilogrammes of wood a week just making injera.Traditional injera baking has unique requirements. It needs a quick, fast heat, evenly distributed over a 60 centimetre ceramic plate called a mtad. The flat plate mtad is balanced upon three stones above the open fire and fuel is fed under the mtad from all directions. While this produces hot, fast flames which are essential for good injera, the energy consumption is highly inefficient - approximately 93% of the fuel is wasted - unsafe and unhealthy. Injera baking is an unpleasant and dangerous activity. Highly flammable fuels, such as leaves and twigs, are used by cooks to achieve the high heat necessary to cook injera quickly and these often flare out as they ignite, causing injury through burns. Large amounts of smoke are produced by these fires and many women complain about stinging eyes and coughing. [top] [end]Mirte stovesThe Mirte stove has been specifically designed to cook injera (Figure 1). By enclosing the fire, the smoke is removed which cuts down on weeping eyes; the stove reduces the chance of getting burned because there is no longer a risk of back flashes from fuel as it ignites and there are no dancing flames; it is clean and modern; it saves energy and reduces the expenditure on fuel because it only uses half as much fuelwood as the traditional fire.
The Mirte stove can be produced either on a large-scale by mechanical means, or on a small-scale by hand. Hand production is ideal for the Mirte because it encourages decentralised production and therefore, expands the geographic range of the product. The cost of the stoves reduces as the number of producers increases (Figure 2). [top] [end]Stove designThe mirte stove is a multi-section stove (Figure 3) made from moulds - one mould is used for the four pieces of the main stove and two moulds are used for the chimney rest. The stove is made using lightweight materials and can be assembled and disassembled in order to be moved or transported (Figure 4).
The Mirte stove was originally designed using lightweight pumice with cement in a ratio of 5:1. Although pumice is a major source for building materials in Addis Ababa and other areas in the Rift Valley, it is not found everywhere in Ethiopia. Another common material that is more widely found than pumice, especially in the northern areas, and is used extensively in the building materials industry, is scoria or red ash. In areas where no pumice or scoria is found, sand and cement are used. Compared to traditional injera baking, all these materials improve the efficiencies of the stove by nearly 100% in household use and fuel consumption is reduced by 50 %. The scoria-cement mix is proving to be extremely popular with consumers in Addis Ababa because it is cheaper to produce than the pumice-cement mix stove, and it also increases the robustness and durability of the stove. [top] [end]Fuelling the Mirte stoveIn an attempt to save Ethiopia's scarce forestry resources, the Mirte has been adapted to cook injera using fuels other than wood, for example, dung and agricultural residues, such as sawdust and coffee husk waste. With the exception of animal dung, the Mirte performed as well with other fuels and materials as with the original woody biomass pumice-cement stove design.
[top] [end]Commercialisation of the Mirte stoveThe stove is now commercially produced in a dozen areas in Ethiopia by over 30 production units employing over one hundred people. Mirte commercialisation is sustainable, and is moving rapidly into increasingly small urban and rural settings in Ethiopia, One third of all Mirte stoves produced during the last year have been sold in small urban areas and in rural areas. Nearly half of all Mirte stoves are presently produced outside Addis Ababa, while nearly all new production units and sales outlets established over the past year have been set up in smaller urban areas.Recently, stove sales have rapidly moved into rural areas for the first time. The major demand for these stoves is in the rural north of Ethiopia where woody biomass is very scarce, and people's incomes are growing in these areas. Hence the demand for the Mirte is rising dramatically, and production and marketing by entrepreneurs has started there in earnest. This is very important for the Mirte, because demand in smaller urban areas and in rural areas with some wealth could easily lead to sales in the hundreds of thousands, if production can be organized and if the Mirte can be properly and effectively promoted. It cannot be emphasised too much that the approach taken for promoting the use of the stove has been through private businessmen who compete in a completely free market place. They have been assisted with technical training, business training and small start-up loans. A 'Cooking Efficiency Team' supported on short term contracts by the World Bank, the UK Department of International Development, and Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd, has provided this training and support, and carried out public promotion activities and monitors the sales of the stoves (Table 1).
Table 1: Recorded Mirte sales from Addis Ababa producers July 1994 to June 1998
The team concentrated on quality control of production through training and technical assistance, and on follow-up and evaluation to monitor the stove's progress, The team made necessary modifications in design, production and promotion of the Mirte, based upon these follow-up results. Sales increase from less than 50 stoves per month at the beginning of the project (April 1995) to over 1500 per month by the end of the DFID project. Current sales have topped 5000 per month in Addis Ababa, and over 3500 per month elsewhere in Ethiopia. Women have been active participants in the production, sale and installation of Mirte stoves. In fact, one in three Mirte producers are women. The stove needs to be installed in households by trained artisans and many women have been trained to carry out this task. They are also the primary beneficiaries of the improved stoves, both as household cooks and as small-scale commercial injera bakers who bake and sell from their homes and often depend on injera baking as their sole source of income (Figure 5).
The Mirte has appealed to large number of household commercial bakers because the stove takes the smoke away from the cook (Figure 6), reduces the quantity of smoke through more complete combustion, protects cooks from flames and, of course, reduces energy consumption and expenditure by nearly half. The health and safety benefits appeal to all Mirte purchasers, who quote these factors as the reason for purchasing the stove at least as frequently as the stoves' energy savings. Furthermore, the Mirte is viewed as a 'modern' household device, which is an important improvement over 'traditional' open fire cooking. These factors add to its commercial appeal and account for its remarkable commercial success.
The commercial potential from the improved cookstove is enormous. If current market trends continue, over 100000 Mirte stoves will be in use by the end of 1999, and over half a million could be in use by he end of the 2000. This requires constant attention to promotion, to technical assistance and quality control to provision of business, management and marketing skills for products for follow-up and ongoing advice for producers and on the judicious use of small amounts of credit to help producers begin and expand production and sales. The Mirte stove was designed specifically to cook injera in Ethiopia and provides a safe, healthy and fuel efficient alternative to cooking over an open fire. However, it would be possible to adapt the stove to meet cooking requirements in other countries while maintaining its benefits in health, safety and fuel efficiency. [top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 41: Household energy: the urban dimension
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01 August 2007; Last edited:
04 December 2008; Version: 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pagename: MirteStovesInEthiopia @HEDON: NDGA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
