“The issue I am dealing with is one that comes from the heart, that affects (me) personally,” said Charlot Magayi, founder of Kompor Bersih Mukuru.
The life-changing stoves he designed are not only safer to use, but have dramatically reduced pollution from the simple act of cooking at home. Both of these problems led him to grow up in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, after being orphaned at just 10 years old.
“Someone should not lose their life while cooking,” he said, which almost happened to his two-year-old daughter when she was burned by the family’s traditional stove.
What’s more, household air pollution caused by these stoves – which use charcoal as fuel in small spaces – causes serious and long-term respiratory and health problems.
It was her daughter’s accident that was the catalyst for Magayi to redesign the traditional cooking stove, because it was “the thing that hurt me the most, it almost destroyed my daughter’s life”.
The Mukuru Clean Stove is more energy efficient, less cooking time and instead of using charcoal it uses briquettes from recycled agricultural materials which burn longer and do not create the same polluting smoke. These stoves are now in 530,000 homes in Kenya, which means that 2.5 million people are now cooking in better conditions because they made it just a few years ago.
While researching how to design better stoves, Magayi found that “household air pollution is the biggest problem when it comes to energy poverty”. Household air pollution “kills nearly 4 million people worldwide every year,” Maygai said.
In Kenya about 20-24,000 people die every year because of it. Interestingly, Magayi explained that research shows “the exposure to household air pollution for children is equivalent to a four-year-old child smoking four packs of cigarettes a day”.
The staggering numbers are attributed to one of the most basic human needs – cooking to feed one’s family. “Imagine breathing that kind of smoke every day,” he said.
These problems follow children throughout their lives and affect all areas. For example, the ability to participate in sports can be greatly affected and it is impossible to achieve a high level due to the lack of lungs.
With such a drastic and long-lasting problem, Magayi says that even when people talk about the climate crisis, the conversation rarely includes household air pollution because of the people who are affected.
“It is more common in underserved communities that do not have access to other cooking methods. It is not necessarily a big problem in big cities, except in the slums. But very poor communities, which are usually in rural areas,” he explained.
To combat the problem, Magayi said: “I decided that I had to design a stove that would first solve the problem of accidental fires among children, but also solve the challenges of housing shortages and high fuel costs.”
In 2016, he decided to create a business because the idea kept coming to his mind. “That’s all I can think about,” he said.
While as a young parent there are significant obstacles to work, they also find positives. “One of the things living in Mukuru, you might know someone or their father works in a metal factory and maybe makes traditional stoves, or works in a market selling different kinds of recycled metal. So I started there just asking if anyone can. help me source ingredients or learn more about traditional stoves,” he said.
The following year, Magayi has created a social enterprise and participated in an accelerator program. He explained that it is not uncommon for people who grew up in slums to become entrepreneurs.
“Where I come from, we have high job insecurity, people are unemployed, so local youth often come up with amazing ideas, and they start their own businesses to create jobs for themselves and the community,” he said.
In addition to improving indoor air pollution, stoves are also changing the lives of women and girls, who are the main cooks in the home. Mukuru Stoves partners with local women and female business owners who work as sales agents to distribute. The company has surpassed the 2024 figure after hiring more than 1,000 women.
For women, they can “earn $7-$10 (£5-£7) more per week in terms of household income,” says Magayi, an average cut of $40-$100 per month that could afford them more food. good, school uniform and other monthly expenses. The stove’s efficiency also reduced cooking time, meaning women could spend more time on paid jobs, and girls could do homework instead of cooking.
Magayi’s company, almost all female employees, is partly able to grow rapidly because it is the winner of the EarthShot Prize in 2022. Founded by Prince William, it awards £1m to five winners to develop their climate solutions business.
Magayi said winning the prize “means everything”, and it has also “been such a validation”.
It has allowed entrepreneurs to get stoves for more people than expected, and increase the number of people hearing about what they are doing. “People are enjoying the benefits of using better cooking stoves, and we’re very grateful,” he said.
These stoves are widely distributed in Western Kenya. Before winning the EarthShot prize, it was available in three counties, which has now increased to seven.
By the end of the year the plan will be 10 districts, although the western part of Kenya has 11 districts, and the team continues to reach all of them, which will produce more than one million stoves.
“Just being able to proudly say that we have agents selling clean shops in Mukuru in each of these districts will be a proud moment for us. Magayi said.
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