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From four in the morning till ten at night, or
till their wood supply runs out, many women in
Addis Ababa bake injera for sale, Ethiopia’s
national bread. They bake it on top of a Mirte, a
new stove devised by Energy for Sustainable
Development Ltd (ESD) and the Ethiopian Energy
Studies and Research Centre. Mirte means
improved.
Injera is a thin, flat bread and cooks in four
to five minutes; but it is two feet across. So even
the Mirte can bake only one piece at once. Yet most
bakers turn out over 200 a day, which means they
are working 13 to 17 hours. Some scale up by buying
a battery of four Mirtes. One person can look after
two.
The project team, which is ten strong, were
surprised at the demand from these commercial
bakers. The Mirte was not intended for such
intensive use, and the team are working on a
tougher version.
Traditional injera-baking, on a plate on a
three-stone fire, is one of the least efficient
cooking methods in the world. The fire is large,
smoky and dangerous: many Ethiopian women are
scarred with burns. Those who have bought Mirtes,
for home baking or for business, value above all
the smoke control and the safety. They also save
money (and trees) because the Mirte needs 40 per
cent less wood (half a tonne less per household per
year).
ESD says a Mirte, which costs under £4,
pays for itself in under two months in household
use and under two weeks in commercial baking. Over
95 per cent of Mirte buyers were still using them
six months later.
Ethiopian towns and cities are unusual in that
they use wood, not just charcoal or kerosene. It is
the best fuel for injera. Injera baking accounts
for almost half of Ethiopian households’ fuel
consumption and, in Addis, costs £50 to
£70 a year, a tenth of a household’s total
spending. Many urban people bake their bread on
electric hotplates (called mtads); but this uses a
lot of power, which is restricted to the big cities
and subject to cuts. Half the Mirte buyers own
electric mtads.
Up to now, fuel-saving stoves have enjoyed only
mixed success in Africa. Mike Bess of ESD cites two
reasons. First, they have not saved enough fuel:
sticking to set dimensions is crucial to
fuel-saving, and stove-builders have often failed
to do so, Second, men tend to have the money in
rural areas and they don’t see why they should
spend it on stoves when wood is free.
In town, however, women have money, and wood
costs cash. So they have both the means and the
incentive to buy a Mirte. The Mirte, moreover, is
of a standard, well-tested size, easy to handle
because it is assembled from six pieces made in a
single mould. Project staff keep an eye on
quality.
A key question for the designers was what the
Mirte should be made of. Building in Ethiopia has
been a low-status job employing mud and wattle;
there is no tradition of craftsman-made building
material. Steve Ragett from the John Parry
Workshops found the solution. Mix cement with
pumice, plentiful round Addis Ababa and a good heat
insulator. Away from Addis, red ash, another
volcanic material, proved satisfactory. They are
now making Mirtes at Mekele in Tigray with river
sand.
At first, the Mirte team got stoves made by
manufacturers of building materials. However, they
also trained installers to assemble and install
Mirtes, and later to make them.
Installers have now taken over manufacture,
after a slow start through lack of experience.
About 9,500 Mirtes have been sold since June 1994,
and 300 more are being sold every week. With local
and regional government help, 50 private stove
makers have been trained in more than ten
areas.
The Mirte was initially developed with money
from Danish aid through a World Bank programme. It
was commercialised with British aid. But sales do
not depend on, and are not restricted by, subsidy.
Part of the point for Mike Bess and his colleagues
is that people make, sell and install Mirtes as a
commercial business. ESD believes this commercial
approach has been as important as technical
qualities to the Mirte’s success.
In Addis Ababa, installers were able to buy
stoves for about £2 and sell and install them
for £3 to £4. This handsome margin
encouraged new installers to come forward, but
provided little incentive to stove- producers. The
project team solved this early by ceasing to order
stoves at the standard £2, leaving it to
producers to set the price. Prices have in fact
fallen over the past six months, during which the
number of producers has doubled. Stoves are now a
quarter cheaper than they were a year ago, making
them easier for poor people to afford. The
potential market in urban Ethiopia is over a
million stoves.
ESD, formed in 1989, unites 14 consultants
interested in renewable energy. Its Ethiopian work
began with a study of wood-burning for the World
Bank.
With the Ethiopian Energy Studies and Research
Centre, ESD designed a small charcoal stove, the
Lakech (which means superior), for making the drink
Ethiopians offer visitors: coffee. Half a million
have been sold at commercial prices over the past
five years.
In Kenya and Uganda, ESD is working on rural
electricity and on solar energy for households. But
80 per cent of its work is now in Europe.
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