More efficient handmade wood, sawdust stoves save trees and fuel wood

While the Kisangani Smith Group was created in Tanzania in 1996 to train unemployed young people in metal working skills so they could make and sell agricultural and workshop tools, its members soon realized they needed to worry about deforestation even more than poverty alleviation. So they began planting trees to offset the charcoal needed to fire their small furnaces, and then developed two types of fuel-efficient portable cooking stoves to replace charcoal stoves in cities or open fires in villages. In 2008, the volunteers won a prestigious Ashden Award for their work.

One stove is an improved wood-burning design which uses 75% less wood than an open fire and is designed for rural areas, while the other burns sawdust left to rot by Njombe’s timber and furniture industries and is intended to replace charcoal stoves in towns. Both can be made by local blacksmiths mostly with hand tools. Since 2005, the group and its trainees have made and sold more than 1,400 sawdust stoves and 2,100 wood stoves at the main KSG workshop in Njombe.

Video added to YouTube by Ashden Awards June 24, 2008.

The sawdust stove can burn steadily for up to six hours so several pots of food can be cooked and water for washing heated at the end; the stove, which can also burn rice husks and other agricultural residue, will last up to five years. Users say the stove cooks much more quickly and cleanly than an open fire or charcoal stove, needs little attention, causes less eye irritation and respiratory problems, and saves money.

A stove costing 35,000 TSh (£16 or almost $32US) can pay for itself in three or four months, as the free sawdust replaces the two standard 70-kg sacks of charcoal used monthly by a family. Each sack costs 5,000 Tsh. Café owners report that they save about four to six sacks per month so the stove pays for itself within two months. One woman said she had previously paid 2,000 TSh per week for wood, so recovered the cost of the sawdust stove in about five months.

While the exact savings in wood has not been calculated, an open fire uses about 24 m3/year of fuel wood, compared with 6 m3/year for the wood stove and 2 m3/year for the sawdust stove, and a family uses about 1.7 tonnes of charcoal annually - equivalent to over 10 tonnes/year of fresh wood, or roughly 20 m3/year.

To date, the volunteer group has planted 100 hectares of fuel wood in Mkiu/Kiyombo village, where one smaller KSG workshop is located, and restored 24 hectares of indigenous forest, which will eventually provide a sustainable wood supply and income. In return for using the land, KSG is helping villagers to build a hydropower scheme that will bring electricity to three villages and the KSG village workshop.

In the past 10 years, KSG has trained about 120 smiths from all over Tanzania, some now employ other staff as well. Twelve trainees at a time work with more experienced smiths, first making agricultural and workshop tools from scrap metal and then wood stoves and sawdust stoves. Trainees do not pay for training but must provide their own board and lodging. When they return home after six months or more, KSG provides them with a small set of hand tools.

The Kisangani Smith Group (KSG) was set up as a non-profit organisation in 1996 by a group of volunteer blacksmiths who mostly earn their income from farming, led by Vincent Mtitu and named after their grandfather, Kisangani Mtitu, who had passed on his blacksmithing skills. KSG is now managed by Vincent's brother, Reuben, supported by a four-member board elected by KSG members each year.

Most members are based at the main workshop in Njombe, but some are at three smaller village workshops in Mkiu/Kiyombo; Mawengi and Ludewa, which have furnaces and hand tools but not electricity. Group members work with trainees on a rota, producing whatever products they have orders for. Most sales come from bulk orders placed by Tanzanian retailers at trade fairs, but some sales are made from the Niombe workshop where product samples are on display. The group will use its Ashden Award to promote the stoves more widely while expanding its training program. Of Tanzania’s population of 38.5 million, 89.9% live on less than $2 per day and 57.8% on less than $1 per day.

Contact: Kisangani Smith Group, P.O. Box 588, Njombe, Tanzania. Email.

This story was adapted from the case study of the KSG prepared by Dr. Anne Wheldon, technical director of the Ashden Awards, and technical assistant Jeremy Rawlings. The photographs come from the Ashden Awards website. The photo at top right shows Furaha Haule and her son, using the sawdust stove; the bottom left photography shows an unnamed blacksmith at work.

For other stories about efficient woodburning stoves, see:

Fuel-efficient traditional stove saves wood in Eritrea

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New stove burns crop waste, transforms rural life in China

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