With a focus on Susan's Bay, one of the largest and most disadvantaged communities in the city, home to 4, people facing daily struggles to access essential services, ENACT aims to identify viable and scalable solutions to address the clean cooking needs and priorities of the community. Between January and June , ENACT appointed three renowned clean cooking companies: Afrigas, ILEM Africa, and PayGas to conduct extensive assessments and delve deep into the heart of Susan's Bay to understand the current cooking practices, availability of clean cooking solutions, usage patterns, and community awareness.
Armed with this knowledge, the project aims to develop comprehensive, market-responsive plans that would effectively tackle the unique challenges faced by urban informal settlements and provide residents with a more efficient and sustainable cooking experience.
Their reliance on inefficient stoves, such as unlined metal or unfired clay-lined stoves for charcoal, along with the traditional three-stone method for firewood, presents significant health risks, contributes to environmental degradation, hampers productivity, and imposes financial burdens on low-income households and businesses.
Households, typically comprising of five people, consume approximately two kilograms of charcoal or up to 10 kilograms of firewood daily to cook two to three meals. This represents a significant financial burden on slum residents, who spend a large proportion of their monthly income on fuel, especially those earning the national minimum wage or less.
Prices tend to fluctuate based on seasonal variations and market availability, with notable differences between dry and rainy periods. Food-based micro-enterprises face even higher fuel costs, depending on their size and customer base. In contrast, clean cooking options like LPG require a hefty bulk payment, placing them out of reach for most people.
