Zimbabwe
In a far northern region of Zimbabwe where there is no electricity, no radio
signal or mobile phone coverage, you might come across Mrs Mashigaidze
immunising her ox by following instructions . . . on a podcast. She is one
of the 11,000 people who have benefited from a trial by Practical Action, a
development charity, in which technology — MP3 players — is extending
traditional methods of distributing information.
David Grimshaw, head of international programme ( new technologies) with
Practical Action, explains that the traditional way of disseminating
information was through agricultural extentionists — local people who visit
communities offering advice and information — but this has become
increasingly difficult given the political situation in Zimbabwe.
“What we’ve done is to capture their knowledge and that of veterinary people
and agricultural experts and put them on to MP3 devices using local
languages,” Dr Grimshaw says. “They can record and replay any voice file. It
might be a question-and-answer session, a five-minute explanation on how to
dehorn or castrate cattle or how to remove ticks.”
Dr Grimshaw adds that the Zimbabweans have taken to the technology easily,
despite never having used computers or mobile phones — so much so they want
to record their own files. He says: “There is a lot of indigenous knowledge
that has a zero cost.
Knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation.”
The MP3 devices cost about £10, but the benefits will outweigh the costs.
Poor people love beautiful things, too,” Ron Bills says. He is talking about
stoves but he likens them to cars. The difference between buying the
cheapest stove at $5 and the most expensive at $40 is akin to the difference
between a basic Volkswagen and a top BMW.
Mr Bills is the chairman and chief executive of Envirofit International, a
not-for-profit organisation that makes simple cooking stoves for use in
developing countries. His is one of a handful of organisations that seek to
develop low-cost stove technology.
He says: “When we set out to design the products, I looked at the market and
saw that there was a lot of cheap junk out there, and it does not work or
last.”
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than half the world’s
population relies on burning biomass — wood, coal, cow dung and other
agricultural waste — for their energy needs. Such materials are usually
burnt on open fires and often indoors or in confined spaces. The WHO says
that 1.6 million people — mostly women and children — die each year because
the smoke contains a range of pollutants.
From a climate change perspective , the fires are a source of carbon dioxide.
Mr Bills says that the stoves improve efficiency over open fires by 50 per
cent, or up to 1.5 tonnes of CO2 each year, the equivalent of a return
flight from London to New York. “We can bring efficiency into lives where
people are burning half as much wood and where they either don’t have to buy
it or gather it,” he says.
Envirofit launched its products in India last year. Part of the challenge has
been establishing the network of distributors and dealers that carry the
products.
“We handle all the warehousing, logistics and transport to the distributor’s
locations,” Mr Bills says. The company is selling up to 20,000 stoves a
month and will introduce them in Africa this year.
But providing the stoves is not sufficient — you have to convince people on
low incomes that they have to buy them. “Where it’s been the norm to cook on
a three-stone fire, it becomes the norm that you’re going to have smoke in
your kitchen,” Mr Bills says. Awareness-building campaigns are powerful.
“Once people see and use a stove, they understand the benefits. They don’t
want their children to breathe in toxic fumes.”
China
D.light Design
We’ve spent hundreds of hours in towns and villages in developing countries to
find out what our customers need,” Ms Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, the communications
director of D.light Design, says. It is no surprise that they want products
that are durable, efficient, cheap to purchase and inexpensive to run.
But D.light’s research has revealed some surprises. “We’ve realised that bugs
are a real problem in developing countries,” she says. “They crawl into any
crevice and, if a device is not well built, they will stop it from working.”
They also discovered that with the growth of mobile phone use in developing
countries, they could make their products more attractive if they adapted
their solar batteries to allow mobile phone charging.
“On average, a single kerosene lantern emits one tonne of carbon emissions
over five years,” Ms Cheng-Tozun says. “We want to enable households who do
not have access to reliable electricity to have the same quality of life as
those who do. Light can increase the working day and people’s income, among
other things.”
The organisation’s design and manufacturing centre is based in Shenzhen,
China, and its lamps sell at retail from $12 to $40 (£7.30 to £24.40). Ms
Cheng-Tozun says that she has heard of a village that uses the lamps to keep
a herd of elephants from eating crops. In another case, a mourner had his
lamp taken off him at a funeral because the deceased person’s family were so
impressed with it. On a more practical note , a village in the Indian state
of Orissa reported that household incomes had risen from $12 to $18 a month
because residents had more light at night.
Chile
Small Grants Programme
In Chile, as in many other countries, men will cook only if a barbecue or an
open fire is involved, so it did not surprise Alejandra Alarcón that she met
scepticism when she encouraged townspeople to use solar ovens.
“There is somewhat of a macho culture in Chile and some of the men could not
believe that it was possible to cook decent food with only the rays of the
sun rather than gas and open fires,” she says.
Ms Alarcón, the national co-ordinator of the Small Grants Programme in Chile
for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is running a project in
Combarbalá to encourage residents to use solar ovens for cooking.The ovens
consist of an 80cm square wooden box that has layers of local wool, which
act as an insulator, and a glass lid. The heat is projected into the oven by
steel panels that capture the rays of the sun.
“The ovens achieve the same temperatures as those in conventional ovens,” she
says. “These are being used in northern Chile and it’s very hot during the
summer and there are high temperatures in the winter. It’s a zone which has
sun all year round, and they can use the ovens all year round. It has the
same results as a conventional oven — but it simply uses the sun.
“One of the positive impacts of this programme is that they no longer need to
collect wood, and they are also promoting reforestation in the area. The
community understands that it has to deal and co-operate over
reforestation.”
Building an oven costs about $110 (£67), but the money is quickly recouped. Ms
Alarcón says: “ A small [gas] canister costs $15 and a family would use one
of these a month. With the introduction of the solar oven, they now use one
canister every five months.”
The UNDP estimates that each solar oven will result in a reduction of one
metric tonne of CO2 emissions per family each year and, just as important,
3,000 fewer kilograms of wood being burnt.
And the men of Combarbalá? It seems that they have warmed to the solar ovens.
