SOCIAL IMPACT

Every year, millions of people die as a result of cooking over wood fires, and many more come down with long-lasting illnesses such as lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These diseases mainly strike women and children who spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

In Rwanda, the starting point for our project, 80% of people cook using open fires. This makes indoor air pollution a severe issue that endangers the health of many parents and their children. As our market research has shown, the majority of people are aware of the existing problem, but few people have thought of solutions to improve their health conditions.

One of the reasons why cleaner cooking solutions have not yet been widely considered might be the fact that most existing solutions greatly interfere with existing cooking traditions. There are various clean-burning cooking stoves available that provide a more complete combustion and therefore produce less toxic smoke. However, most of these cooking stoves are not adapted to local cooking habits.

Project Guhungiza therefore takes a different approach to tackle the problem: Instead of introducing a new stove, we have developed a ventilation system, solely to extract the smoke from the house. This system should in no way intrude with the customer’s habits. Furthermore, the design is very simple and uses cost-effective components, which makes it affordable for those who need it.

Click here to find out more about the disastrous effects of open wood fires