75% of the world’s poor in both urban and rural areas uses open fires or rudimentary wood stoves to cook their food and boil water for safe drinking. A reliance on wood fuel for cooking contributes to growing poverty largely by consuming the time and energy of women and girls, whose daily burden of wood gathering keeps them from engaging in productive activities, such as tending gardens, raising cash crops or attending school.In Sub-Saharan Africa, women and children can spend as much as three hours a day collecting firewood.
Meanwhile,as the rural poor continue to flock to cities and towns for better lives;urban poverty is growing faster than rural poverty in the developing world. The urban populations of the world’s two poorest regions—Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—are expected to double over the next two decades, with the majority of urban residents residing in slums without basic amenities such as clean water, sanitation and regular electricity.
- Cooking with charcoal and firewood on inefficient stoves is a primary contributor to the persistence of poverty in Sub-Saharan African cities.
- The poorest urban households can spend as much as 40% of their income on cooking (and heating) fuel.
- Lacking the cash to purchase in bulk, the poor must buy charcoal or firewood in daily or meal-sized portions--the least cost efficient form.
- The price of both firewood and charcoal in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased by more than 50% in real terms over the past several years and is likely to continue to rise as urban demand intensifies and forest stocks decline.
Powerstove is a clean cookstove that self-generate electricity, designed with an under-served population in mind. Powerstove uses 70% less biomass to efficiently cook food 5x fasters than traditional stoves hence savings poor households $300 annually from cost of cooking fuels and lighting. Also, Powerstove is fitted with built-in IoT System which helps users to get cash payments for their carbon offsets when they use Powerstove. A family that uses Powerstove averagely 4 hours daily earns between $80 to $120 annually from Carbon Finance, so for a family that lives on less than $2 per day; we are using our technology to give them the chance to improve family nutrition, pay school fees, start a business, pay health-related costs or simply save for a rainy day.
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