The Women Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has distributed a total of 1,828 clean cook stoves to 27 trained clean cook stove entrepreneurs and advocates in Kaduna.
The Founder and Programme Director of the NGO, Ms Olanike Olubgoji, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, February 29, 2020 in Kaduna, the Kaduna State capital.
Olubgoji explained that the distribution was under the UNDP-Global Environment Facility (GEF) Sustainable Fuel Wood Management (SFM) in Nigeria project, being driven by the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN).
She said that, under the project, WISE has developed the capacity of women, men and people living with disability across communities of Cross River, Delta and Kaduna states to become clean cook stove entrepreneurs.
Accirding to her, the 27 beneficiaries are selected from the 70 clean cook stove entrepreneurs trained in Kaduna State, under the UNDP-GEF SFM project.
“The project leverages on the market-driven approach model developed by WISE, to increase households’ access to clean cook stove, which we hope would soon replace the traditional three-stone cook stove in Nigerian homes.
“This is the second phase of the distribution. In the first phase, the entrepreneurs were given about 40 stoves each at no cost, to enable them to raise the needed capital to sustain the business.
“In the second phase, the stoves were given at subsidised rate, to those who sold the highest number of stoves and are doing very well in terms of advocacy, educating people and creating awareness.
“In fact, some of the entrepreneurs have been invited to participate in the 3-day multi-stakeholders’ consultative and planning forum on the implementation of SFM project, scheduled for March,” she added.
Olugboji noted that about 70 per cent of Nigerian households still relied on the traditional three-stone cooking method that consumes huge quantity of fuelwood which encourages deforestation.
She pointed out that deforestation was a major contributor to global warming and its attendant effects.
According to her, the promotion of clean cook stove uptake was part of efforts to deepen households’ access to energy efficient cook stove to discourage overdependence on traditional cooking methods.
The programme director said that WISE, in partnership with Women Alliance in the United States of America, began building a movement of clean cook stove entrepreneurs since 2015.
She said that the NGO had so far trained 306 entrepreneurs in Cross River, Delta, Gombe and Kaduna, out of which 120 were from Kaduna State.
“The effort is to ensure that the rate of deforestation is drastically stemmed down, when we have people adopting this energy efficient means of cooking.
“We are also using the intervention to create the needed awareness on global warming and its attendant effects,” she said.
One of the beneficiaries, Mrs Nwabuoku Ken-Dikens, the highest seller of the product, told NAN that she joined the clean cook stove business in 2019 and was skeptical at first.
She said that after the training, she was given 36 clean cook stoves, which she sold within a short time, adding that she has sold more than 80 stoves so far.
According to her, the business has empowered her immensely and created financial stability for her household.
Another beneficiary, Mr Emmanuel Musa, said that he has sold 38 stoves out of the 40 given to him in 2019, describing the clean cook stove enterprise as a “profitable” business.
