Dakar, Dec 10 (APS) – Two million improved stoves were distributed to rural and vulnerable households over the period from 2010 to 2024 in Senegal to promote non-polluting cooking technologies, the director of climate change said on Monday. of ecological transition and green financing, Madeleine Diouf Sarr.
”We went from thousands of improved cookstoves to millions of improved cookstoves distributed, precisely two million across Senegal,” she said.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr spoke at the opening of a workshop to share achievements, achievements and lessons learned from the Project to promote climate-friendly cooking (EnDev/FVC). It is being implemented in Senegal and Kenya with funding from Germany, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Senegal and Kenya.
It aims to accelerate the growth and transformation of the improved cookstove sector to reduce national consumption of non-renewable biomass and, thus, reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The project helps the governments of Kenya and Senegal achieve their sector-specific Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets by 2030.
”Out of a target of 8 million improved cookstoves to be distributed from 2010 to 2030, we are on the horizon of 2 million distributed,” she said.
This distribution was carried out thanks to ”a collaboration between NGOs, financial partners, local authorities, women’s associations, trade chambers, and artisanal producers,” she explained.
She indicated that these improved stoves made by local artisans are distributed to households in almost 7,000 villages in Senegal.
According to Ms. Sarr, the objective of the EnDev/FVC project is to ”create” in Senegal ”an entire improved stove sector”. ”It is a technological tool that we can produce locally. It is also a product that is necessary to fight against climate change,” she stressed.
”It is a product that is necessary to fight against deforestation, also useful to address the health of women in households,” she insisted, indicating that an improved stove ”uses less 30% or even less than 40%” of coal required than in a traditional fireplace”.
”As a result, with improved stoves, we save wood, save charcoal and we protect the forest with everything it drains behind it,” she maintained.
The director of climate change at the Ministry of the Environment and Ecological Transition, pleaded for ”improved stoves to be distributed throughout Senegal”, so that the concept, ”one household, one improved stove” becomes a reality at both urban and rural levels.
Abdoulaye Cissé, representative of the NGO partners of the EnDev/FVC project, welcomed the support for women’s groups and young entrepreneurs so that they, in turn, can also integrate the improved stove sector and thus ensure their contribution to the development of this country.
The project in its approach intervened in “all 14 regions of Senegal, communities and villages”, he indicated.
This effectively allowed the “different entities to create jobs, by supporting young people and women’s groups, but also to work with an essential component, which were the microfinance institutions,” he underlined, noting that at least, each executing entity has created more than 3,000 jobs. “So, if we evaluate just the distribution sector, we are at least more than 10,000 jobs created,” he indicated.
Open Monday in Dakar, the workshop ends this Tuesday.
ID/AB