COMACO is excited to announce the construction and distribution of 50,000 TLC Rocket Stoves to rural farmers in COMACO’s operational areas of the Luangwa valley. The stoves are designed to improve the fuel efficiency for cooking, thus saving trees, while also reducing the emission of harmful pollutants in smoke and associated serious health risks in breathing them in. Currently, rural households in the Luangwa Valley use 3-stone open fires for cooking, which contribute to high levels of CO² emissions and also pose health risks from breathing in fine particulate matter in wood and woody biomass smoke. Because these TLC Rocket Stoves do not require large diameter firewood, woman and children will no longer need to travel large distances in search of firewood, where they are vulnerable to physical abuse. Instead, they will be able to harvest the Gliricidia sepium trees as fuel wood that COMACO farmers are planting in the millions each year and to also use crop residues like corn cobs efficiently for additional fuel. By eliminating the need to search for firewood, woman and children will also have significantly more time for other more beneficial activities, such as attending school and gardening.

To ensure successful project implementation COMACO has mobilised, in the first year of the project, 35,500 rural farmers in 15 chiefdoms who have already moulded 804,750 bricks for making stoves. It has also managed, within three weeks, to construct and distribute 9,000 cook stoves out of the total of 35,500 planned for the year. This progress is testimony to appreciation by farmers, especially women,for having access to this improved technology. This project is being undertaken jointly with CQuest with support from the German Development Bank, KfW’s Carbon Markets Foundation. If the project is successful in meeting its early implementation goals, and we can show evidence that there are buyers for these carbon credits, the project will be expanded to 80,000 stoves and implementation extended into 2016.

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