Programme Impact
Bakery ovens
The promotion of bakery ovens was reintroduced into programme activities in 2009 after it was established that the reason for the slow uptake in the past was the prohibitive cost of the bakeries which was due to the high mark-up costs being applied by the intermediary NGO responsible for building them. A new dedicated ProBEC team thus built 10 ovens in 2009 and the survey covered 4 of them.  Overall users were happy with the stoves and reported wood savings and hence an increase in income. The money saved by using improved stove is used to buy more wheat which in turn increases income, to pay the workers and to save the money for future investment.

Clay & mud household stoves
There has been a sudden surge in production of these stoves and a high level of acceptance, due to the dedicated efforts of the community based activists who are given bicycles and cellphone credits by the partner organizations to promote the stoves and train people how to make them. This remains a self-help approach which is taking off.  55% of the stoves were given as a gift, 15% bought them, and around the rest are self-made.
Out of a sample of 320 families, most of the respondents have fixed mud stoves (96, 7% in Sofala and 73,6% in Manica), while clay stoves represent 5, 6% in Sofala and 35,8% in Manica. They cook on them 3 times a day.

Users have experienced a drastic reduction in money and wood costs – before using the stoves they were spending between 20 and 25 Mts per week and after it dropped to 11Mts.

They also experienced a reduction in frequency of collecting wood which now lasts twice as long as before the stove introduction.  Likewise, time taken to collect wood diminishes: before 3 days and after between 1,5 days and 2,5 days.  

In terms of correct use, 53% are loading the fuel in the clay stove perfectly, 70% use correct pot sizes, 60% of the users always use lids, and therefore 3 out of 6 criteria are being fulfilled.

A total of 155 institutional stoves have been produced to date.  The figure comprises 107 fixed institutional Rocket stoves and 48 portable institutional Rocket stoves.  

There was a potential demand from prisons for the fixed institutional Lion stove and this market was being developed in partnership with the Royal Dutch Embassy in Maputo – six Lion stoves have been constructed at a prison in Maputo in October 2008. Efforts are continuing with a view to market the Lion stove to prisons throughout Mozambique.

In the impact assessments, due to the recent introduction of this intervention, and its near collapse due to the abandonment by the World Food Programme, only 10 institutions were sampled. Most of the visited institutions are open centres (57%) followed by boarding schools (29%) and at end mixed institutions (14%). Mixed schools are those where some students stay at school and other stay at school part of the day.

67% of the schools use the stoves every day. 88% of the cooks are women. Most of the visited institutions said that they buy wood (75%) while 25% said that they collect wood from the bush.

Regarding the number of meals prepared, 72% prepare two meals for students going home, 14% prepare three meals and the same number said that they prepare one meal.

70% of the respondents said that improved stoves save wood while 50% of the respondents said that improved stove is rapid.

Schools have experienced wood reduction with the use of the stoves - before using improved stoves, schools used to spend about 3 hours per day on wood collection but after using improved stoves, schools spend 2 hours on wood collection. Since this is mainly the responsibility of pupils, they benefit from having more time and more energy to attend to school work.
In those schools that bought wood, on average, before using improved stoves, the schools spent 594Mts per week on wood and after the introduction of the improved stoves, the expenditures on wood were reduced to 392Mts per week.

The money saved as a result of using improved stoves, is used for buying more cooking ingredients, to increase the quantity of food for students, and to buy medicine.

In terms of correct use, all respondents (100%) said that they usually cut wood before using it, 90% of the users use dry wood for cooking, and all use the lid while cooking, therefore 3 out of 6 criteria for correct use are being fulfilled.

A partnership has been established with World Vision in order to setup an Institutional Cooking Stove (ICS) project. This forms part of the proposal for co-operation between ProBEC and World Vision to build institutional stoves in the northern provinces of Nampula, Tete and Zambezia. These institutional stoves are used where larger amounts of food are needed that cannot be cooked on a standard kitchen stove. Typical examples are schools, hospitals, prisons, or in small- and medium-sized enterprises such as cafes, bakeries and restaurants.

A negotiation of Memorandum of Understanding with the identified other partners for ProBEC’s exit strategy is currently taking place.