Tanzania

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1 News and Recent Developments
2 The History of Solar Cooking in Tanzania
3 Climate, Culture, and Special Considerations
- 3.1 See also
4 Documents
5 Contacts
6 See Also

[edit] News and Recent Developments

Solar box cookers are assembled by local artisans in Masasi and Ndanda

March 2008: The Okemos, Michigan (USA) nonprofit organization Solar Circle continues its efforts to make solar cooking an option for women in Tanzania. Solar Circle works with local artisans to manufacture solar box cookers from Cyprus wood, aluminum printing plates, glass, used rubber, and other materials available in Tanzania. However, these cookers cost $70 or more to build, and are heavily subsidized to be affordable. Solar Circle has partnered with engineering students at Michigan State University (MSU) to design lighter, less expensive models that can still be made with local materials. Last year, professor Craig Somerton took nine of the students to Masasi, Tanzania to work with Brother Yohannes Mango and his team of artisans at the Benedictine Abbey in Ndanda. According to the Solar Circle Web site, the “students came armed with sound scientific theories on the behavior of light and heat, and met up with artisans experienced in constructing solar ovens. They worked together to test and improve the ovens. The artisans learned some theory, the students learned some practicalities of building without power tools and computer enhancements.” The students also spent time teaching the local population how to use the solar cookers. The on-line journal MSU Today International reported that, while the students were in Masasi, professor Brian Thompson spent time in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro working “to make the use of solar ovens a nationwide reality by networking with numerous agencies before formulating a broad initiative” involving businesses, governmental entities, and schools. The Shell foundation, for example, has since funded a solar cooking workshop in Morogoro at Sokoine University. As noted on the Solar Circle Web site, many agency representatives, entrepreneurs and policy makers attended and “gathered to learn about solar cooking and brainstorm best ways to promulgate solar cooking in Tanzania.” A number of solar cookers were on display, including models from South Africa, Netherlands, and the United States.

Spring 2007: The Baptist mission is busy spreading solar cooking knowledge and skills in Dodoma. Having bought four CooKits initially, they made more from carton and glue and recently requested 24 more. (Source: the Appropriate Technology Development Resource Center in Dodoma, Tanzania)

April 2007: The Web site of Solar Circle tells an inspiring story of how a few people can make a big difference by working together. Solar Circle is a US-based nonprofit organization made up of a network of friends, mostly women. A few years ago, Solar Circle took two dozen American-made Global Sun Ovens® to Masasi, Tanzania, where they were enthusiastically received. However, people quickly saw the impossibility of importing enough ovens to overcome high purchase and transport costs. Consequently, Solar Circle has started a small industry in Tanzania to build solar box cookers. Several Tanzanian craftspeople have joined in the effort. They make the outer box from cypress wood, which is treated with cashew nut oil to repel insects. Reflective surfaces are made by collecting and cleaning discarded lithographic plates, and crafting them into the proper shapes. Gaskets are made from used tires or shoe leather. Students from the Mechanical Engineering Design Program at Michigan State University (USA) are collaborating to develop a model that is lighter, cheaper and more efficient, using only domestic Tanzanian materials and manufacturing processes. Mlelwa, one Tanzanian who built a solar oven, coined a new proverb: “People say 'Jua kali,' but we know 'Jua ni mali.'” ("People say the sun is hot today, but we know the hot sun is wealth"). Contact: Solar Circle

June 2006: Solar Household Energy, Inc.'s Director of Programs for Latin America and East Africa, Camille McCarthy, traveled to Kenya and Tanzania to meet with governmental agencies, NGOs, and private sector representatives to explore the feasibility of cooperative solar cooking ventures. Many groups expressed interest in SHE pilot solar cooking projects. SHE expects to conduct initial solar cooking training, marketing and sales projects in Kenya and Tanzania in early 2007.

March 2006: Sperancea Gabone recently held a solar cooker exhibition at Mawenzi primary school in Moshi, Tanzania. Over 20 people gathered to learn about solar cooking and to taste solar-cooked food, including ugali, meat, beans and rice. Rolf Behringer, of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES), led a solar box cooker construction workshop at nearby Karanga Technical School, and joined Ms. Gabone at the exhibition. In addition to solar box cookers, retained-heat cookers were also used. (A retained-heat cooker, also known as a fireless cooker or “hay box,” is an insulated enclosure in which is set a pot of food that has been brought to a boil, allowing it to continue to cook after being removed from its heat source.) Contact: Sperancea Gabone

2004: Tanzania Posts Corporation released a series of postage stamps commemorating the 75th anniversary of Girl Guiding in Tanzania. Included in the set was a stamp depicting Girl Guides “demonstrating environment friendly solar cookers.”

[edit] The History of Solar Cooking in Tanzania

Wide ranges of projects are found in Tanzania, many located in schools, missions, or local training centers. Solarafrica, a Zanzibar organization, has promoted both basketry and solar ovens on the island of Zanzibar for many years, sponsored by the Esperanto Club of Lund, Sweden. Early in the development of connections between the two areas, the shortages of fuel for cooking were noted. Swedish participants have developed a number of simple technologies that can be locally made, such as parabolics of cardboard lined with foil, and another formed from a large flat basket. (Solar Cooker Review, Sept '02).

Yet another project on Zanibar, sponsored by a German group, Mama Earth, uses both parabolic cookers and boxes, preferring to cook some food in the slower box and the parabolic for "speed cooking" rice, and also for dying plaited palm leaves for craft use. In addition, the group is experimenting with the use of flattened beer cans as reflectors in a frame of wood or metal for homemade cookers.

Another German group, Solar Cooking Zanzibar, is also located on the large island offshore from the mainland of Tanzania. The focus of this group is craft and artisan development; they have used solar cookers to dye fabrics and basketry material for craftwork. Some of the profits have enabled members to purchase solar cookers for their own household use (Solar Cooker Review, Aug, '02). The German electric utility, Bayernwerke, has made possible the provision of parabolic cookers for a local fishing village, as well, and a number of sponsoring organizations have made possible the building of a workshop and solar powered kitchen. (Solar Cooker Review, Aug '00).

On mainland Tanzania, a religiously affiliated group, EAG (T)Church - MJIMWEMA in Kigoma produces locally made parabolic or "bowl" type cookers. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania in Morogoro Province has conducted research on fuelwood use, and then began using parabolic cookers, sent from Germany, for cooking, pasteurizing water, and firing clay bricks. The Kilimanjaro Biolgas and Solar Centre sponsors many types of renewable energy and has been active in solar cooking promotion for many years. (SCI Rev Dec 00). Many of the devices promoted by Anna Pearce (see "multiple-nation" promoters section above) are in use in Tanzania, particularly the "Anahat" cooker/hatbox combination. Other organizations working in Tanzania are the Ilemi Secondary School of Mbeya, Net-Score of Malinyi, and Solar Innovations of Tanzania.

In the summers of 2001, 2002 and 2003, Project AHEAD, an American nongovernmental organization, demonstrated the use of solar cookers for water pasteurization in two areas of Tanzania, first in Shinyanga District, in the northwest of the country, and the second in Kisarawe, near Dar es Salaam. National and district health officers have attended workshops on the technologies of water testing for contamination, followed by demonstration of the use of solar cookers for water pasteurization. In the summer of 2003, household surveys were conducted in both districts to serve as baseline data and an evaluation tool for a large project to be mounted in the period, 2004-2006, funds permitting. This will be the first major demonstration project focused on the use of solar cookers for this purpose. Because of the innovative nature of this project, a case study on this topic is included with this report.

[Information for this section was taken originally from State of the Art of Solar Cooking by Dr. Barbara Knudson]

[edit] Climate, Culture, and Special Considerations

Solar Cookers International has rated Tanzania as the #9 country in the world in terms of solar cooking potential (See: The 25 countries with the most solar cooking potential). The estimated number of people in Tanzania with both sun and fuel scarcity in 2020 is 7,500,000.

Tanzania is experiencing a demographic and an environmental crisis. Tanzania has a population of around 37 million. It has a fertility rate of almost five children per woman. This rapidly growing populace places extreme pressure on the environment. For example, forests are being diminished rapidly in significant part by demand for fuel wood. A case in point: between 1960 and 1980, the Amani forest in Tanzania was reduced by 50%. For every 28 trees cut in Africa today, only one is planted.

As forests around communities are degraded, women and children must forage for fuel wood further and further from home. In some places, women must camp overnight in the bush. When the distances become too great, some families must pay 25% to 50% of their income to buy cooking fuel.