Kenya introduces Africa's first steam cooker for low-carbon transition
Six schools in Nairobi and some other Kenyan cities have introduced Africa's first steam cooking technology to transition towards low-carbon energy sources.
The Zero Carbon Schools initiative promoted by the National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya (NACONEK) and the Ministry of Education aims to replace traditional firewood-based cooking and to encourage schools to embrace renewable energy.
The programme, which intends to support the transition of over 6,000 schools to alternative low-carbon energy, aligns with the East African nation's school meals programme, currently serving more than 2.5 million children, local media KBC News reported.
“Conventional cooking methods require you to put a fire under the cooking pot but with the innovation, we use briquettes that heat the water to generate steam. The steam is then dried to increase the temperature and the pressure,” Wycliffe Ng’ong’a, Director of Faith Engineering Works, the manufacturer of the meko-friendly steam cooking system is quoted by KBC News.
"The new system significantly reduces meal cooking times in schools by over 70%, allowing simultaneous use of up to 10 cooking pots. Regarding costs, the system ranges from Ksh 800,000 ($5,220) to Ksh 20 million ($130,505), depending on the number of pots required," she added.
The Kenya School Meals Programme, part of its climate-smart food security strategy, aims to engage in home-grown solutions by boosting local small-scale farms' production. This includes establishing low-carbon energy production and value chains and reducing tree-cutting, charcoal production, and firewood use.
The programme also supports the local production of briquettes, promoting the establishment of local enterprises run by youth and women, and ensuring schools' access to affordable low-carbon energy during their transition to alternative cooking methods, KBC News reports.
