CEDI Promotes Clean Cooking In Nigerian Communities
Nigeria faces tremendous energy poverty. Out of 168 million people, over 100 million lack access to electricity and more than 30 million households depend solely on wood as a source of fuel for cooking. In Nigeria, cooking is mainly done with the traditional three-stone fire using wood which poses a great health risk. According to the World Health Organization, cooking smoke causes over 95,000 deaths in Nigeria annually. In fact, Nigeria experiences the highest number of smoke-related deaths in Africa; after Malaria and HIV/AIDS it is the biggest killer. Clean cookstoves is an alternative solution that offers smoke-free environment and a number of other benefits.
Clean cookstoves use considerably less biomass or wood, and thereby ease the pressure on forests. Reduced burning of wood also leads to more rapid reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change. In addition to reduction in indoor and outdoor pollution, other benefits of these stoves also include monetary and time savings due to the decreasing need to search for, or buying costly fuels. The use of clean cookstoves saves lives, money, forests and empowers women and keeps them safe.
The Community Excellence and Development Initiative (CEDI) is committed to empowering and transforming lives by implementing sustainable development projects in health, education, agriculture, clean energy and environment. CEDI is working to scale up access to clean cookstoves in Nigeria and partners with clean/fuel-efficient cookstoves producers to distribute and raise awareness on the benefits of using the stoves such as reduction in climate change by reducing the quantity of fuelwood used for cooking in Nigerian communities, enabling families to save money, building capacity/creating jobs for entrepreneurs on households and institutional cookstoves as well as improving the health of households in Nigerian communities among others.
Envirofit, one of CEDI’s partners creates access to household, institutional, and commercial technologies that create prosperity, empower communities, and transform lives throughout all of West Africa.
CEDI recently created awareness on Envirofit Stoves especially the Econofire stove (Smartsaver Woodstoves) and distributed the stoves in Kuchigoro, Piwoyi, Karon-Majiji, Gosa, Kuje, Karishi, Jikwoyi and so many other communities in Nigeria.