Rural cooking made safer and easier

Nine rural households in the Oshana Region on Friday received innovative stoves that have been designed to reduce the use of firewood in the fight against deforestation, desertification and land degradation. The EzyStove was a response to women’s concerns over respiratory health, burns, poverty, unemployment and safety while searching for firewood. Oshana Governor Clemens Kashuupulwa said in a statement read on his behalf by his special adviser, Michael Mwinga, that rural households still rely heavily on wood as fuel for cooking. “As trees are becoming hard to find, the daily cutting of trees for wood has caused alarming deforestation, desertification and land degradation that negatively affect climate change and as a result we are experiencing severe droughts and floods,” said Kashuupulwa. Rural households are estimated to use about a million tons of firewood every year, causing alarming deforestation that has resulted in widespread desertification. The smoke from open fires also contains harmful gases which affect people’s health. Kashuupulwa congratulated the designers of the energy-efficient EzyStove for helping create jobs and income-generating opportunities for the people in Ondangwa and the Oshana Region in general. The designers of EzyStove have set a target of 200 000 households in the country and 300 job opportunities for locals. ”It is very important to manufacture the products in Namibia and in our town and use them. It takes us nowhere if we are relying on foreign products if we can engage ourselves in the manufacturing business,” said Kashuupulwa. EasyStove was developed by Creative Entrepreneur Solutions (CSE) in partnership with Verydaya, a Swedish design company. The Pupkewitz Foundation and Environment Investment Fund in Namibia supported piloting of the EzyStoves. CES has received several international design awards for the stove. ONDANGWA MERJA IILEKA