{"id":4444,"date":"2019-08-08T10:35:46","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T07:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=4444"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","slug":"smart-gas-cooking-seeks-to-break-african-cities-dirty-charcoal-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/08\/08\/smart-gas-cooking-seeks-to-break-african-cities-dirty-charcoal-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Gas Cooking Seeks To Break African Cities’ Dirty Charcoal Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0Megan Rowling<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nwidespread use of charcoal for cooking in African cities can cause devastating\ndamage to forests up to 300 km away, scientist Sebastian Rodriguez-Sanchez\nfound while working on energy and agriculture issues in West Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nin 2015, he co-founded a business to try to fix the problem by weaning people\noff charcoal – made by smouldering wood – and onto bottled gas, a fuel common\nin his home country of Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nfar, efforts to introduce cleaner stoves that burn less fuel have been led\nmainly by aid agencies working in rural parts of Africa and Asia – and have had\nlimited success. But a new push by businesses targeting urban areas aims to\nshift the dial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For families in the Tanzanian city of\nDar es Salaam, where Rodriguez-Sanchez started his business, KopaGas<\/strong><\/a>,\nthe $150 cost of a gas stove and canister equals half the average monthly wage,\nmaking it hard to afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\na result, four out of five residents in a city generating 40% of the East\nAfrican nation’s GDP still depend on a fuel that damages both forests and their\nhealth to make daily meals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s\n2019. People have smartphones they can do everything (with), but they are still\ncooking with charcoal,” said Rodriguez-Sanchez. That\n“outrageous” situation has to change to avoid environmental disaster,\nhe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KopaGas\nhopes to spur uptake of gas cooking using a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system it\ndeveloped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nan upfront fee of 15,000 Tanzanian shillings ($6.50), a household gets a\nliquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cooking kit that includes a canister fitted with\na smart meter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngas supply is unlocked by mobile phone payments and the meter monitors\nconsumption, feeding back data via the Internet of Things (IoT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KopaGas\nhas signed up 3,500 households for its PAYG service, and supplies another\n20,000 with traditional gas bottles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its\nservices reach about 117,000 people in total, a number it aims to boost to 1\nmillion in Tanzania by the end of 2021\u2026Read more>><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Megan Rowling The widespread use of charcoal for cooking in African cities can cause devastating damage to forests up to 300 km away, scientist Sebastian Rodriguez-Sanchez found while working on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}