A Kenyan manufacturer of energy efficient charcoal stoves has been providing Kenyan homes and businesses with a way of cooking that is much cheaper than gas or electricity, while also working to re-establish woodlands in the country with the native acacia trees, for almost two decades.

After inventing the Kinyanjui Jiko, a fuel-efficient charcoal oven that comes in small, medium and large industrial sizes, in 1992, Dr Maxwell Kinyanjui created Musaki Enterprises to make and market the stoves. His son, Teddy Kinyanjui, now helps to run the family-owned business.

Made entirely in Kenya by local artisans, the ovens are designed for a variety of environments from domestic household use and safari models to high-capacity models for micro-enterprises and large institutions. Cooks can use the ovens to bake, toast, steam or boil. On average, cooking with the charcoal ovens is 40% cheaper and 45% more energy-efficient than electricity and 15-20% cheaper and 30% more energy efficient than gas.

Unlike electric or gas ovens, the charcoal oven can be used anywhere and is powered by a renewable energy source. Larger commercial models suit businesses which don’t have access to, or can’t afford, LPG gas or electricity.

The Kenya Ceramic Jiko (jiko is Swahili for cooker), or KCJ, a cheap, simple and effective stove, is used in urban and rural homes all over Kenya, and has become popular in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal and Sudan as well. The KCJ stoves on average save between 1 and 1.5 tons of CO2 per stove per year compared to other models.

The KCJ uses a ceramic liner placed inside a metal container. The metal is usually recycled, often taken from 55 gallon steel drums. The ceramic liner stops the heat energy from escaping into the environment and helps to focus the heat on cooking. Simply adding the ceramic liner reduces the stove's fuel consumption by between 25 and 40%. The charcoal or wood sits in the ceramic basin and the burnt ash falls through holes in the bottom of the liner.

"It's like origami, jiko making, bending and folding just the right thing in just the right places," Teddy says. "We are starting a jiko/tree school next year, and it will take 18 months for a vocational type certificate and option of franchise for the better students."

As well as pioneering clean, affordable, energy alternatives for everyone, Musaki Enterprises is concerned about sustainability of the source of fuel – trees. Over a six-year period, working with the Woodlands 2000 Trust, it has established more than 20 acres of certifiably sustainable charcoal woodlots. The Trust is working to help wean Kenya off of imported fossil fuels used for cooking.

In 1996, Musaki created the Kitengela private Arboretum as a woodfuel demonstration project, on the outskirts of a sleepy Maasai trading centre. One goal was to see how long it takes one tree to grow one bag of acacia charcoal in a semi arid area: the answer is, eight years, with correct planting and managing. While the arboretum is still doing detailed research into wood fuels and designing charcoal and wood powered stoves and ovens, its surroundings have changed quite a bit in the intervening time.

The arboretum now sits in the middle of Kitengela town, a vast urban township that is home to more than 100,000 people, located between a large steel mill, a church, a suburban middle class housing estate and the tin shacks of labor lines that service the steel mill. With 24 species of dryland adapted tree species, some over 30 feet high, the arboretum serves as a carbon dioxide sink for the steel mill, provides an aesthetic barrier for the housing estate, shades church goers and factory workers, and provide a place of peace and enjoyment for the public and a diverse habitat for wildlife.

A private enterprise run for public benefit, the Arboretum uses holistic land husbandry and is self-sustaining through demonstration models of small scale organic agroforestry food, fuel and fodder sites, seedling sales and education and extension work.

A new initiative called the Kenya Seeds Of Change is designed to encourage land owners to plant trees, by selling inexpensive tree seeds through supermarkets and local stores, and promoting direct seeding woodlot establishment.

For more information, contact:

Musaki Enterprises Ltd., Po Box 23058, Nairobi, Lower Kabete 000804

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This story was prepared from materials on the Musaki Enterprises website, and from a story entitled Successful Fuel-Efficient Cookers Show the Way that appeared in the June 2009 issue of Development Challenges, South-South Solutions, published by UNDP's Special Unit for South-South Cooperation. The pictures come from the Musaki Enterprises website. The two pictures at the bottom of the story show the arboretum now (right) and the original land on which the arboretum was established in 1996 (left); the other pictures show the various models of stoves, and the popular KCJ (middle left).