Gaia Association at Copenhagen

Gaia Association won an Ashden Award in 2008 for their work with cookstoves burning bioethanol made from waste products. The stoves are often used in refugee camps.

Milkyas Debebe, their Managing Director, was at Copenhagen, where he was able to meet with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles:
Harry Stoves, who has worked with Gaia Association for some time, said:

As you know, Prime Minister Meles has been in the forefront of negotiations at COP15 and we have been very grateful for his efforts. He is championing, on behalf of Africa and the Global South, exactly the right things to make improved stoves and clean liquid fuels available in Africa.

He is asking for more technical and financial assistance for Africa to enable Africa to quickly reduce its Global Warming Commitment. Very possibly residential fires for cooking and agricultural fires for land clearing and preparation are the two largest producers of GHG, with deforestation being the other major contributor. The production of black carbon aerosols that reach the atmosphere and travel great distances may quite possibly be even more harmful that the production of GHG. Residential cooking fires and charcoal production and use may in fact contribute to 18% to 25% of black carbon in the atmosphere and this black carbon may have a higher GWC than other sources of black carbon production because of when and where this black carbon is produced. The alcohol stoves essentially reduce this black carbon to zero. Thus a million ethanol stoves in Africa could make a significant reduction in black carbon pollution from Africa, and this could have a swift and immediate impact on Africa's contribution to the problem.

Prime Minister Meles has charted out a carbon neutral strategy for Ethiopia, already a country that has one of the lowest carbon footprints in Africa (at least before black carbon is considered. He laid out Ethiopia's strategy in this way:

Ethiopia shall:

1. Produce all of its power from clean or renewable sources, principally hydro, wind, geothermal and solar.

2. Use liquid biofuels to reduce its dependence on petroleum fuels. It shall fuel blend, and is already doing so, and it will use biofuels for cooking.

3. Afforest or re-forest Ethiopia and reclaim the land with appropriately chosen grasses, bushy plants and trees. The Prime Minister highlighted the MERET program as one successful example.

After the Side Event in which the above photo was taken concluded, and which the Prime Minister chaired (having just come from a negotiating session), Milkyas Debebe was able to speak to him directly about the ethanol stove project. The Prime Minister clearly stated his full support for the project and indicated that it was intrinsic to the nation's strategy.

To paraphrase, he said to all at the side event: 'With or without an agreement at COP15, and with or without proper support from the more developed nations, we will do what is necessary in Ethiopia to reduce or eliminate our impact on global warming.'

This was very inspiring indeed.

Below is a recent film made about the work of Gaia Association:


And the 2008 Ashden Award film on their work:

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Visiting Ashden Award winners in East Africa

Ben Dixon, programme manager on the Ashden Awards team, has just returned from a trip around East Africa, working with past Ashden Award winners. Here's a report on his trip.

I’m just back from East Africa, having spent almost three weeks working with Ashden Award winners in Ethiopia and Tanzania. It is always inspiring to see the amazing social, environmental and economic benefits that Ashden Awards winners are delivering in the communities where they work – and this trip was no exception.

I started off in Addis Ababa, where I was able to attend a workshop that the Gaia Association (2008 winners) had organised to celebrate winning their Ashden Awards with all of the partners that have supported their work. This workshop had impressive high-level attendance from the Ethiopian government, including three government ministers and the head of the government’s Environmental Protection Agency. All were very supportive of Gaia’s plans to work with their private sector partner (Makobu Enterprises) on scaling up their manufacture and supply of ethanol stoves for urban areas, and providing ethanol stoves for more refugee camps in the north of the country (partnering with the UNHCR). It was also great to meet some of their customers in Addis, who are very happy with their stoves. We are working to connect Gaia with sources of support as they build their business plan and identify the finance they will need to achieve their scale-up goals.

Next was Tanzania, where we have three winning projects (and one winner who has relocated from Rwanda).

Zara Solar (2007 winner), based in Mwanza in the north-west of the country, are one of Tanzania’s leading suppliers of solar products. I was able to visit the villages and institutions where Zara has installed solar systems, and see some of the ways in which solar electricity is transforming their customers’ lives. Lighting of course (replacing dirty and expensive kerosene lamps), mobile phone charging, fridges, satellite TV, and even a piano synthesiser! Zara is working on two new strategic projects: developing new products for Lake Victoria’s fishermen, who use polluting kerosene lamps to attract fish to their nets, and working with local credit agencies that can provide loans to help their customers overcome the barrier of the upfront costs of purchasing a solar system (which will pay for itself in reduced fuel costs).

Mwanza Rural Housing and Food Security Project (MRHP) (2006 winner) are also based in Mwanza. They are an NGO providing housing, agricultural, and energy services to rural communities around Mwanza. They won an Ashden Award for their sustainable brick-making programme, training local entrepreneurs to fire bricks using agricultural waste (rice husks) rather than firewood. It is amazing to see the transformational effect this programme has had in the region – everywhere we travelled there were smoking brick kilns fuelled by rice husks, and rice farmers are now selling rice husks to brick makers (they used to pay people to take them away). We discussed MRHP’s plans for the future, which include expansion of their brick programme and commercialisation of a programme to provide energy saving stoves for rural and urban people. We will be providing support in the form of a professional volunteer organised through the Scottish charity Challenges Worldwide.

Kisangani Smith Group (KSG), are based in Njombe in the south-west of Tanzania. This group of blacksmiths won a 2008 Ashden Award for the design and production of a cooking stove that runs on sawdust – a waste product from the local timber industry. We spent some time looking at their plans for scale-up of their stoves business, and then travelled out of the city to the village of Mkiyu, where KSG have a training workshop for local youths. They have plans for a micro-hydro project to supply electricity to the workshop, the village, and a local secondary school – we visited the proposed site and also were lucky to see two neighbouring micro-hydro projects (one working, one under construction). It is truly eye-opening to see the engineering that is used to build these projects in remote areas, and to see the impact of bringing electricity to places where development is so constrained by the absence of energy for lighting houses and schools and carrying out income-generating activities such as agricultural processing.

Finally, a special mention to Ainea Kimaro, who won an Ashden Award for his biogas programme in prisons in Rwanda (he was working at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, Ashden Award winner in 2005). Now living in Tanzania, we met and I heard all about his biogas plans for Tanzania – exciting and top secret for now, so watch this space!

Ben Dixon

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