For decades the humble traditional borehole and handpump has been the staple option for rural water supply in much of sub-saharan Africa. Situated in the centre of a single community, these hand pumps can usually only serve around 300-400 people. But in the last 20 years or so, and certainly in the last 10 years,… Read the full article >
CO2balance in Sierra Leone
CO2balance has been exploring the options for launching projects in Sierra Leone for a long time. Following on from extensive nationwide feasibility studies, we finally decided recently to launch an initial borehole rehabilitation and maintenance programme in partnership with the NGO CODE-SL. Having lived in Sierra Leone back in 2016 and been captivated by the… Read the full article >
Eritreans have a new name for Cookstoves: the ‘Saviour Stove’
Desey is a 47-year-old grandmother who lives out in the Eritrean desert, south of the capital city Asmara. It is a forbidding landscape of rock and mountain, which has been almost completely deforested. Desey and her family were forced to buy firewood everyday, simply to cook and feed herself and her family, spending a lot… Read the full article >
The Wide-Ranging Impacts of Clean Water: The Story of Gloria
The CO2balance team in Uganda conduct monthly visits to the boreholes to visit the communities, listen to feedback and carry out repairs. In February they met Gloria, who is the caretaker of Aminalucu borehole in Dokolo District, Northern Uganda. Gloria is 39 and married with 5 children. She lives in Dokolo District – Lango, Northern… Read the full article >
Giving Power to Rural Women
With the support of Australian High Commission in Kenya in the 2015 Carbon Zero Kenya partnered with a women group (Umeme women group) in Western Kenya in Kisumu West to produce 900 cook stoves and sell them within the community. The women were empowered with skills in stove production and marketing. The aim of the… Read the full article >
Counting the Cost
Human life requires cooking, which means having access to fuel. Most families across the globe especially in developing nations depend on traditional stoves for cooking. These stoves emit a huge amount of smoke that affects the families. For anyone who relies on an open fire to cook daily meals, the need for fuel rivals that for… Read the full article >
Costly Smoke
According to WHO indoor smoke from coal, wood or dung – used as cooking fuel by more than 3 billion people worldwide – ranks ahead of unsafe water as a cause of death in low- and middle-income countries. Almost 2 million deaths a year are caused by cooking smoke, which is linked to pneumonia in… Read the full article >
Not Just About Cooking!!!!
Cooking on a three stone stove is the cheapest way to prepare food in many parts of the world. This is because to assemble a three stone stove you only require three suitable stones of the same height on which a cooking pot is balanced over a fire. That’s how cheap the stove is. This… Read the full article >
The Joy of Cooking Together….
Carbon Zero Kenya Limited though not so pronounced remains a huge player in environmental conservation initiatives in Africa for instance considering its efforts to combat effects of climate change in Kenya. Over the past few years Carbon Zero has helped install over 65,000 cook stoves in the country which have gone a long way in… Read the full article >
Empower a Woman; Empower the World!
While most governments in Africa acknowledge that empowering women and girls is a key contributor to economic development little as been done to achieve this noble goal. In Kenya women are the backbone of the rural economy. Nevertheless they receive only a fraction of the resources geared at ending poverty i.e. land, credit, inputs (such… Read the full article >
Stroke of Luck for Rural Women in Kenya
Worldwide demand for energy to meet social and economic development and improve human welfare and health has been on the increase over the years. This has attracted many versions of energy efficient technologies springing up with an overall objective to save planet Earth. Carbon Zero Kenya Ltd has remained a key player in the fight… Read the full article >
Cooking with a Difference
Our initial baseline findings before starting off the improved cook stove project in Kisumu East indicated that people are more than willing to shift from using traditional cook stoves to using improved cook stoves only if they perceive a genuine utility value in adopting the improved cook stove. The success of improved cook stoves depends… Read the full article >
Repairing for better service….
Before the last four years moving most if not all households in Shimba Hills (Maungu, Kasighau, Golini and Muhaka) in Taita Taveta and Kwale Counties were using traditional three-stone fireplace for cooking. During that period women used to spend an average of 15 hours per week collecting fuel wood from local forests in the larger… Read the full article >
Cooking Differently
Approximately three billion people across the globe cook every day using open, three-stone fires or rudimentary traditional stoves. Cooking with these traditional cook stoves is inefficient and grossly polluting, harming health and the environment, and contributing to global warming. In many places worldwide, women must walk for hours to collect firewood, risking their safety and… Read the full article >
Uncovering Success; getting feedback directly from project beneficiaries in the rural communities
Many of us wake up every morning and go to work; we do everything possible to ensure we attain results – tangible results for that matter. But how do we tell if development projects we tirelessly implement have impacted people’s lives? At this point I need to introduce my Company and what we do. I… Read the full article >