Competing for Development: A Case Study of Fuel Efficient Stoves for Darfur Samer Abdelnour, PhD student1 Richard

Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario 1151 Richmond Street North London, Ontario N6A 3K7 Tel: 226-448-6977 Email: sabdelnour@ivey.uwo.ca

Dr. Oana Branzei, Assistant Professor Richard Ivey School of Business The University of Western Ontario 1151 Richmond Street North London, Ontario N6A 3K7 Tel: 519-661-4114 Email: obranzei@ivey.uwo.ca

With Invited Expert Commentaries: Dr. Widad Abdel Rahman, Professor and Former Dean of the School of Management Studies, Ahfad University for Women Dr. Babiker Badri, Professor and General Coordinator of the Rural Extension Program, Ahfad University for Women Dr. Ashok Gadgil, Senior Scientist and Deputy Director Strategic Planning, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Mohamed Majzoub Fidiel, Country Director, Practical Action Sudan Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, Product Design and Testing Consultant, Programme for Basic Energy Conservation

Because the authors contributed equally, the order of authorship is alphabetical. We extend special thanks to our Sudanese colleagues and collaborators and all the participants who had generously shared their experience and insight with us. A comprehensive of the teaching case including a role play simulation is available through Ivey Publishing. A research article detailing our data collection and primary findings is available on request from Dr. Oana Branzei, obranzei@ivey.uwo.ca. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and a 2007-2008 Canadian-African Capacity Building Grant for Private Sector Development Research in Africa co-funded by the Investment Climate and Business Environment Research Fund (ICBE RF), The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and TrustAfrica (Ford Foundation).
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 Fuel Efficient Stoves for Darfur: Challenge, Opportunity and Trade-offs2 On April 21, 2008, Nadal was preparing breakfast for her family. The temperature outside was already over 100 degrees. As the small children crowded around for their meal, Nadal spoke about the benefits of the CHF metal stove. I save about 40 piasters (equivalent to $.20 cents) per day on firewood, and the time I use cooking is reduced by more than 30 minutes for every meal. This stove gives me an extra hour in my day, and this time may give me a chance to find more income.3 This was music to the ears of the team who had developed the updated BerkeleyDarfur Stove a team of leading scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and volunteers from Engineers Without Borders who had jointly developed the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, a stove four times more fuel efficient than the 3-stone fires traditionally used in Darfur4. (Photo Credits:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/staff/gadgil/docs/2007/darfur-stove-carbon-ppt.pdf, last accessed on July 12, 2008, used with permission)

The Berkeley-Darfur Stove design was based on a systematic survey in Darfur during Nov/Dec 2005 of cooking methods and tools as well as household fuel wood and food needs. The stove, designed to perform well even under the windy conditions common to Darfur, was being built and assembled with simple hand tools in Darfur in a pilot production facility that currently built about 100 stoves a week (during good weeks).5 Each Berkeley Darfur Stove saves the user family about $250 per year in fuelwood costs (or equivalent labor effort currently expended to collect fuelwood). The stove lasts for five years, and will cost about $20 manufactured in Darfur. So, a Darfur refugee household receiving a Berkeley Darfur Stove immediately experiences a doubling of their disposable income (or earning capacity). The 2.2 million refugees in Darfur need about 300,000 stoves, so the challenge (and the opportunity) is to set up multiple full scale assembly shops. (Photo: First group of women receiving the Berkeley-Darfur stove. Credit: B. Tachibana)
This case study was written for teaching purposes. It does not necessarily reflect actual events or actual opinions of the actors and it includes fictitious details. 3 Source: CHF International webpage, http://www.chfinternational.org/node/28283, last accessed on July 26th, 2008. 4 There is a trade-off between the power-rating of the stove (kW of thermal power output) and its fuel efficiency. One can operate the stove at a high power (a high rate of heat output) and cook faster, but then the fuel savings are marginal. If the stove is operated at the lowest practical power rating, the efficiency is much higher. In the introductory example, Nadal was saving only 20 cents worth of fuel daily because she was saving about one hour of cooking time she was using the stove at high power, and so was not saving much fuel. If she used the stove to save the most fuel, she will not save much time at all, but would save between 50 cents and 70 cents daily. Since she does not earn 30 to 50 cents in her spare hour, this is not a good decision. But she probably does not know that she is saving cooking time but wasting fuel. This points to a weakness in the training of the IDPs who have received the stoves consistent with the observation by Mazjoub of Practical Action on the field work of CHF. Personal correspondence with Dr. Ashok Gadgil, August 18, 2008. 5 http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/fuel-efficient-stoves-darfur-refugees-darfur-stoves-project, last accessed on July 26th, 2008.
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Dr. Ashok Gadgil, the champion of the The Darfur Stoves Project, and the recipient of the 2007 Breakthrough Award, knew that scaling up required collaboration. The Darfur Stoves Project would provide full technical support to local NGOs to set up local production facilities that can each produce 100 stoves a day. The dissemination model includes provisions for quality control during manufacturing, and continuous improvements in the design of the stove by proactively obtaining user feedback and assessments of stove performance in the field. CHF International in Sudan (CHF) had been an ideal partner for the Berkeley Lab since late 2005. CHFs first country director in Sudan, Dr. Niaz Murtaza, felt that the mud-stove programs initiated in 2004 in close partnership with a Darfur-based local NGOs, Practical Action, were limited, two-fold. On the one hand, reliance on local materials and train-the-trainer approaches constrained design changes and thus capped innovations that could maximize fuel efficiency (mud stove savings were estimated at about 50% over traditional three-stone fired, compared to more than 75% for the Berkeley-Darfur Stove). On the other hand, mud stoves lifespan was much shorter averaging 6 months, or one tenth of the estimated 5 years of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove; if a superior efficient design could be manufactured locally and cheaply without compromising quality, and then distributed in mass to the internally displaced communities in Darfur, Murtaza felt, CHF could transform the challenge into an opportunity. USAIDs Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) liaised Robert Lankenau, CHF Sudans Darfur Field Director at the time, with Dr. Ashok Gadgil of the Berkeley Lab, encouraging them to work together to find a solution for the high incidence of rape and mutilation of displaced women in Darfur. With US$10,000 in donor funding, CHF hosted Gadgil and his team of researchers for a visit to North and South Darfur in November-December 2005. There they tested existing CHF and Practical Action mudand-dung stove and a three stone fire against two light metal stove designs from India (the Tara and Priyagni) and against the Rocket stove which the team had purchased from Dean Still of Aprovecho.6 Dr. Gadgil identified a metal FES design as a part of the solution, and set an ambitious goal to disseminate these FES in the thousands of refugee women7. The Berkeley Lab report summarizing the visit proposed a metal stove design with improved fuel efficiency, based on the Tara, which could be standardized and locally produced and distributed in large volumes. CHF liked the proposed design, and offered to become the platform for Berkeley Labs forthcoming involvement in North and South Sudan. The need for saving fuelwood had grown since the onset of the armed conflict in Sudan in the early 2003. Armed conflict in Darfur between the Government of Sudan, the government-supported Janjaweed8 militia and opposition groups from Darfur had accelerated into a humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people. The widespread destruction of life and property had displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands to perish in what was is cried-out as genocide and ethnic cleansing.9 Almost 2 million Darfuris had become internally displaced persons (IDPs) and were now living in camps and were quickly depleting
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Personal correspondence with Dr. Ashok Gadgil, August 18, 2008. http://erg.berkeley.edu/erg/people/gadgil_research.shtml, last accessed on July 8, 2008. 8 The Janjaweed thought to mean man with a gun on a horse, devil on horseback, or a man on a horse is a blanket term used to describe mostly armed gunmen in Darfur, Western Sudan and Eastern Chad. The Janjaweed are comprised of individuals from nomadic Arab-speaking African tribes whose livelihoods were destroyed by climate change, other small African tribes, prisoners, criminals and mercenaries. 9 Abdelnour, S., Babiker, B., El Jack, A., Wheeler, D., McGrath, S., Branzei, O. (2008) Examining Enterprise Capacity: A Participatory Social Assessment in Darfur and Southern Sudan. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University: Toronto. Available online at www.fsed.ca/sudan, last accessed on July 7, 2008.

 fuel wood resources nearby. Women, traditionally responsible for cooking and wood harvesting, were traveling farther and longer, and this increased their vulnerability to gender-based violence. The combined concerns of deforestation, starvation, and violence against women, became a central concern in Darfur: CHF thinks about every aspect from preventing deforestation through the use of improved efficiency stoves, to replacing the trees that have been cut; from reducing the risk of violence and rape, to freeing up the time of Darfuri women for income generation activities that promote community rebuilding.10 The ties between CHF and the Darfur Stove Project of the Berkeley Lab grew stronger as Ghotai Ghazialam, the second Country Director of CHF International in Sudan (CHF), decided over a year back, in February 2007, to invest US$65,000 in developing a local manufacturing facility that could produce the Berkeley-Darfur stove in large volumes. The goal was to bring down the cost per unit, from the estimated US$37 of the prototypes to US$20, perhaps even lower, as the production afforded economies of scale and learning. This stove is an excellent project. The only thing we are concerned about is cost [...] Our next challenge is to reduce the cost while preserving the high quality of the prototype -- because if you lose the quality the efficiency of the stove is gone.11 Michael Helms, a doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, who had been recruited by the San Francisco branch of Engineers Without Borders and trained by the Berkeley Lab in stoves fabrication, had arrived in Khartoum in April 2007 to help advance the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (BDS) project. Helms joined CHF as the second visiting international professional (VIP). The first CHF VIP, Brian Tachibana, had come to Sudan in the fall of 2006, to work with local vendors in Khartoum to build approximately 50 prototypes of the BDS stove. These prototypes were sent to Darfur and field tested by CHF staff. Helms had brought with him a number of tools with him from the US, and during his first few weeks in Sudan he sourced the remainder of what he would need from local metalworkers and artisans in Khartoum. If he arrived in Darfur with his tools by the start of May, the factory could be up and running by July. The first hurdle to mass production and dissemination was the manufacturing cost. Affordability was CHFs most pressing concern. The production of each prototype stove ran between 35 and 39 dollars per unit. This was too high for the Darfuri IDPs, and prices for alternative fuel efficient stoves ranged between $1 for the International Lifeline Funds magic stove and $7 for the Practical Actions mud stove. CHF had sold the prototypes in the camps at $7 each, and estimated that at $10 or less, the adoption would reach a tipping point needed for mass dissemination and adoption of the Berkeley Darfur stove in the IDP camps. The IDPs are willing to pay at least seven dollars; they say they can pay up to ten dollars for the metal stove. Ghazialam asked Helms:Will we be able to bring the production cost south of ten dollars, or will we might need to subsidize a portion of the cost. 12 Helms was optimistic:
10 11

Interview with CHF Country Director, Ghotai Ghazialam , at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 19, 2007. Interview with CHF Country Director, Ghotai Ghazialam, at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 19, 2007. 12 Interview with CHF Country Director, Ghotai Ghazialam, at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 19, 2007.

We dont know yet how much value the metal stoves will have to the IDPs. Certainly if you sold them for 5 dollars (which would be 1000 Sudanese Dinars) youd have people lined up all day long to buy them. At 35 dollars, very few people are going to want to buy stoves, so somewhere between 5 and 35 is that sort of demand curve. This just goes back to economics. So we have to find out what is the demand curve. As we get production going our fixed costs would be almost done, so we will incur mostly per unit costs. So one of my challenges will be to reduce the number of the parts, simplify the parts, simplify the cost of the parts, simply all the labour going in. 13 But it was difficult be sure of the final cost of the stove until the facility was up and running at capacity. Helms knew that part of the benefit of a well-built metal stove, even if a bit more costly, was the ability for a small factory to produce a rugged yet durable stove quickly: The Berkeley Darfur Stoves are very rugged, but we want them to be very simple and very fast, and we want them to last at least five years.14 There were several different types of FES being promoted in Darfur (Exhibit 1). Yet many Darfuri women still fell back on the three stones stove because it was faster.15 The communities were receptive to the Berkeley-Darfur stove, but were not yet accustomed to the new technology: People think its high-tech. At this point, the Berkeley Darfur stove is not being used by the IDPs in the field as often as we want. It should be used 100% of the time, but its not, because it looks nice, or its not stable, or because its one of the several stoves that theyve received from other agencies [...] We have to find out why its not being used and find a way of promoting its use.16 The acceptance of the technology by the IDPs was not a challenge to be taken lightly. CHF had a few years experience disseminating FES in Darfur. Its initial pilot FES program had promoted a mud-stove design based on its collaboration with Practical Action in Sudan17. Its presence in Darfur since 1997 gave Practical Action great clout with local communities, as they had worked extensively with marginalized groups before the humanitarian crisis. By 2005, Practical Action became the lead implementer for CHFs FES projects in Darfur. Practical Actions grassroots no-nonsense approach, and its commitment to benefiting the community through involvement, development and use of technology, demonstrating results, sharing knowledge and influencing others, appealed to the IDPs in North and South Darfur, making it an attractive partner for CHF and several other NGOs involved in fuel efficient stove interventions. Practical Action was able and willing to share their accumulated knowledge, local connections, and their simple and cost effective grassroots approach with CHF: women were trained to make their own stoves from local mud/clay and the technology was disseminated gradually through a train-the-trainer approach. The design we made, it has to be made by the housewife herself and the stove should be build around a pot. So it fits only the pot its built for. 18 Mohamed Majzoub, Country Director for Practical Action in Sudan, cautioned Ghazialam about the risks of scaling up too quickly. Majzoub understood how the crisis created pressure for mass production of the mud stoves by CHF, but he worried that rushing in might cause both quality and efficiency to decrease.
Based on interviews with Michael Helms, CHF VIP at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 20, 2007. Based on interviews with Michael Helms, CHF VIP at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 20, 2007. 15 Interview with CHF Country Director, Ghotai Ghazialam, at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 19, 2007. 16 Interview with CHF Country Director, Ghotai Ghazialam, at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 19, 2007. 17 The ITDG stoves are made from mud mixed and well kneaded with donkey dung, to provide fibrous content to the clay for improved strength. 18 Based on interviews with Practical Actions Country Director, Mohamed Majzoub, in Khartoum, April 4 and April 8, 2007.
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 He was mainly concerned about the idiosyncrasies of local pots what if the stoves distributed did not fit the pots which were owned by the women?19, he asked. Even small gaps between the pots and the stoves could undo all of the efficiency gains from the improved but standardized design. He also critiqued the initial design, which felt was not rugged enough to handle the stirring of thick local food produced: You need three people to cook the local dish, the asida, a thick porridge. [...] -- two people to hold the stove and one to do the stirring, which is not practical.20 Majzoub felt the price was too high: How are you going to have IDPs who are desperate for anything to pay for whatever? Even if it is one dollar it will be a problem for them to pay. He was also worried about the sustainability of the intervention: This is a complicated stove - it has to be designed and manufactured in a special workshop. [...] It is a little bit difficult to replicate.21 Majzoub offered to organize a workshop with some of the women in the camps to find out from them how they use and view the different technologies. But the first report released by Dr. Ashok Gadgil and his team from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in February 2006 had already proven the superior fuel efficacy of the Berkeley-Darfur stove in early field tests: The most suitable design for Darfur conditions would be a modified Tara stove. With training of the cooks in tending the fire, this stove can save 50% fuel for the IDPs. The stove costs less than $10 (US) to produce in Darfur, and saves fuelwood worth $160 annually at local market prices. [This metal stove] could be rapidly produced in large numbers locally in Darfur, with good quality control exercised on the material and dimensions of the stoves right at the workshop where it is produced. 22 The Berkeley lab report offered some praise for the mud-and-dung stoves. They agreed that mud stoves can significantly reduce fuelwood consumption using the same fuel, pot, cooking methods, and food ingredients used by Darfur IDPs. But they argued that a metal stove would deliver better fuelwood efficiency, quicker and cheaper than IDTG/PAs mud model. For programmatic and administrative reasons, the LBNL mission do not recommend a mudand-dung stove, for which control of quality and dimensional accuracy is expensive and cumbersome to administer, particularly in a rapid large rollout effort. 23 Their second report singled out ITDG/PA as inferior to the Tara: ITDG (Practical Action) mudstove was the worst performer, using almost 90% of the fuel that the 3 stones fire consumed and emitting significantly more smoke.24 A series of tests of fuelwood consumption for cooking the two traditional

Based on interviews with Practical Actions Country Director, Mohamed Majzoub, in Khartoum, April 4 and April 8, 2007. 20 Based on interviews with Practical Actions Country Director, Mohamed Majzoub, in Khartoum, April 4 and April 8, 2007. 21 Based on interviews with Practical Actions Country Director, Mohamed Majzoub, in Khartoum, April 4 and April 8, 2007. 22 http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4071&context=lbnl, last accessed on July 10, 2008, p. 23. 23 http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4071&context=lbnl, last accessed on July 10, 2008, p.3. 24 Practical Action Sudan, Sharing Newsletter #13, July 2007

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 dishes, mullah (an onion-based stew) and assida (a thick porridge), showed superior performance for the modified Tara design relative to the mud stove under wind and no wind conditions25: Mulah Assida

Majzoub took LBNL to task on these findings and issue their own findings in the July 2007 Newsletter, blaming Berkeleys conclusions on assessment bias, inadequate research, invalid comparisons, and lack of focus to the needs of the displaced people in Darfur: When we traced the basis for their [Berkeley Labs] result we found the following: 1. As the team was hosted by CHF, they used samples from CHF stoves and beneficiaries. 2. CHF El Fashir has followed what they called (emergency relief approach) by simply using trained trainees (who were not initially trained as trainers) to produce stoves in the CHF centre in Abu Shauk camp and then distribute the stoves to the different IDP households. By following this approach, a number of problems emerged: a. The Mud stove is designed to fit an individual pot. Each housewife must therefore be trained to build a number of stoves to fit the different pots she uses in cooking. b. Each trained woman must be given a manual like the one we prepared for use in training (a pictorial manual designed to help women even if they are illiterate) but this has not been done by CHF. c. Initially the CHF trained women in Abu Shauk were trained as beneficiaries and not as trainers. Therefore they lacked the necessary skills of being trainers. We continue to reinforce messages in training and have produced accessible manuals aimed at increasing awareness of key attributes of an effective stove. d. By distributing readymade stoves, it is most probable that households were given stoves of the wrong size in relation to their pots. The report referred to problems of smoke which is due to the use of the wrong size stove. We also detected that smoke can be generated by the use of green wood, which is more likely the case in the current situation of the shortage of dry wood.

Source: Susan Amrose, G. Theodore Kisch, Charles Kirubi, Jesse Woo, and Ashok Gadgil, Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove, March 2008, Figure 11, p. 25 and Figure 12, p. 27. Used with permission. Full details are available online at http://darfurstoves.lbl.gov/d/lbnl116e-devtestbds-2008.pdf, last accessed July 7, 2008.

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 e. The CHF approach is not moving towards sustainability. IDP housewives will return home without the knowledge of manufacturing the stoves, the best way to utilises their stove and the best cooking practices.26

ITDG Stove (Practical Action) CHF Stove (Berkeley Darfur Stove) 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Porridge Lentils Pigeon Peas

On Monday, February 5, 2007, Practical Action rebutted these results with a new set of comparative tests, conducted in El Fasher. In addition to the seven Practical Action personnel conducting the tests, eleven representatives from different parties including the United Nations, Government and NGOs were in attendance. The tests compared several stoves in terms of efficiency, savings in terms of fuel consumption and cooking time by looking at how these stoves were being used in 13 randomly chosen households.Their report, published in their Newsletter #13 concluded that the ITDGs mud stove offered an average of 50% wood savings.27

As the differences between Practical Action and CHF drew a wedge in their earlier collaboration, several new players were gaining momentum. Over 200 international NGOs were now operating in Sudan, and there were perhaps a dozen different stove projects being promoted for Darfur. CHFs field officers have often found four or five different types of stoves promoted by different organizations in the same tent. The Aprovecho Research Center was promoting its Rocket Stove; the International Lifeline Fund launched its magic stove the Rocket, at a rock bottom price of $1 each (Exhibit 1). Helms had not heard of the magic stove, but he certainly knew of Aprovecho. They were one of the main sponsors of the ETHOS conference which he had just attended in Kirkland, Washington on biomass stoves. He felt that the conference was small and not very well publicized. Aprovecho was one of the lead global players in fuel efficiency technology development. Since 1980, Aprovecho had been working on their own design -- the Rocket stove, which combusted wood more efficiently than the existing mud or metal stoves, and also forced more of the heat from the fire into the pot to speed up cooking. Dr. Larry Winiarski, currently Technical Director, had been the champion of the Rocket stove design since the beginning, and he had taught the Aprovecho staff how to design improved cook stoves. The Rocket design principles 28 had been disseminated for almost three decades and could be used to improve many kinds of wood burning stoves that cook food, heat houses, warm water, or dry crops. Over the years, Aprovecho has worked with many universities and institutional labs sharing their expertise to expand the worldwide knowledge base and technical capacity. The stoves laboratory [...] features state-of-the-art emission monitoring equipment, including a new gas chromatograph and equipment to study particle color. Using the emission equipment, both in the lab and the field, has resulted in an evolution of the Rocket stoves. Each part of the stoves has been analyzed and improved over the years. Our understanding of how stoves work is based on a library of tests of more
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http://practicalaction.org/docs/region_sudan/practicalactionsudan_13_jun_07.pdf,lastaccessedJune7,2008 Adapted from Practical Action. Sharing. IDTG Publishing: Khartoum 2003-2008, Issue #13. 28 Aprovecho published 10 design principles for rocket stoves at http://stoversource.com/mambo/images/Design%20Principles%20Poster.pdf, last accessed on July 10, 2008.

 than 60 stoves. ARC has published eight manuals on cooking and heating technology. These manuals, plus instructional videos and many articles can be found at Aprovecho's web site.29 The Aprovecho staff had just started StoverSource, a one-stop shop for the resources local and international NGOs might need to expand, enhance or supplement your stove projects. StoverSource sold Rocket stoves and Rocket stove parts imported from the Shengzhou factory (a family-run factory in China), and emissions monitoring equipment made in Oregon. Helms was not at all surprised to hear that there were others trying to promote their own solutions for the problems of rape and fuelwood scarcity in Darfur: There is a need for fuel efficient stoves, everyone is in pretty much agreement on this, but when you have so many, so many groups fighting for control and ownership...and even, even this project I have heard through many different channels that this particular project has had its enemies, who are very upset that, that CHF is taking such a dominant role of this particular project. [...] Within Khartoum there are over 200 NGOs, within Sudan, probably a total of about 250. And, many times, many times there are rivalries. There are inter-agency rivalries, there are people competing for scarce resources. People need publicity so they can show people that they are meeting their commitments. And of course everyone is always looking for more funding [...] they call it the NGO economy.30 The NGO economy was booming. In January 2005, the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army, sparked new hope for peace in the war-ravaged country. The peace agreement brought in a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian emergency and development aid to Sudan, much of it specifically targeted to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur. Between the start of the Darfur humanitarian crisis in 2003 and 2005 development aid had tripled, from US$609.8 to US$1787.2 million (Exhibit 3). Everybodys interested. [...] World Bank is interested in funding this [...]. There are a lot of ideas going on how we can get additional funding for this project.31 According to the Darfur Stove Project, the estimated savings from the Nyala factory would exceed $30 million: The estimated need for stoves in Darfur is over 300,000 now [...] A Darfur factory which would build 100 stoves per day (25,000 stoves annually) including training of local workers will cost $65,000 [] Annual output of this factory will provide $30 million to the Darfur refugees in avoided wood fuel costs, or income earned from other remunerative activities, and also help the local and global environment.32 But could the Berkeley Stove compete effectively with other stove programs, such as the rocket? Ghazialam reviewed the trade-offs. The Rocket relied on Chinese imports, but could still employ the displaced Darfuri women to put the combustion chamber together and building a mud outer shell. The value chain disconnect between sourcing and assembly could leave the Rocket vulnerable to the same bottlenecks and inefficiencies which have plagued prior mud-stove programs. The consistency of producing the Berkeley Darfur Stove in Nyala, complemented with a locally grounded, train-the-trainer
http://stoversource.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=47, last accessed on July 10, 2008. 30 Based on interviews with Michael Helms, CHF VIP at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 20, 2007. 31 Based on interviews with Michael Helms, CHF VIP at CHFs office in Khartoum, April 20, 2007. 32 Amrose, S. Kisch, G.T., Kirubi, C., Woo, J., Gadgil, A. (2008). Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California: Berkeley.
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 dissemination method, offered an appealing proposition to funders interested in local capacity building (USAID, October 2006 success story). But would its quality, scalability, and high efficiency be sufficient to overcome the ten to one cost advantage of the Rocket?

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 Exhibit 1: Models of Fuel Efficient Stoves in IDP Settings

a)b)

Figure 1: Traditional Three-Stone Fire The most traditional way of cooking food in Darfur (as well as in other IDP settings and in and many other rural communities across Africa) is on a wood fire built between three large stones. Pots are placed directly on the stoves. For cooking the traditional Darfuri meal, an onion-oil stew (mulah) with millet porridge (assida), women typically use both a small (16-19 cm diameter) and large (23-28 cm diameter) round-bottomed pot.

Photo Credits: Figure 1a: Practical Actions Newsletter Sharing, #13, used with permission. Figure 1b: http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/economic_growth_and_trade/ener gy/publications/EGAT0020.PDF.

Figure 2a,b: Indian-made Tara stove The Tara stove is designed to work with flat-bottomed cooking pots that fit snugly into the stove body rather than the round-bottomed pots used in Darfur. As part of the stove design intended to work with a flat-bottomed pot, three metal pot support brackets are fastened around the top of the Tara stove body (circled in Figure 2a). The lower (L-shaped) part of each bracket supports the pot while the upper part ensures a small (1.5 cm) gap between the pot perimeter and stove wall to allow flue gases to escape while improving heat transfer to the pot. When a large round-bottomed pot is placed on the Tara stove, it sits on top of the pot support brackets (see Figure 2b). This leaves an extended gap of approximately 6 cm between the pot and the stove body, allowing significant convective heat loss to occur during even a small breeze. (Susan Amrose, G. Theodore Kisch, Charles Kirubi, Jesse Woo, and Ashok Gadgil,
Photo Credits: Figure 2a,b: http://darfurstoves.lbl.gov/d/lbnl116edevtestbds-2008.pdf, p. 7, used with permission.
a)b)

Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove, March 2008, p. 7).

Figure 3a: Standard Mud Stove Used in Darfur Figure 3b: Darfuri Women Producing the ITDG/PA mud stoves
(Source: Practical Action. Sharing. IDTG Publishing: Khartoum 2003-2008; Issue #13) Modeled after the Upesi stove, ITDG/PAs mud stove was a simple pottery cylinder (known as the liner) built into a mud surround in the kitchen. The stove was designed to bum wood, although it could also bum crop waste such as maize stalks and cobs, and animal dung. Fuel is fed into the fire through an opening at the front of the stove. It did not have a chimney, but produces less smoke than an open fire because it bums fuel more efficiently. The Upesi is designed for one pot, but two or more stoves can be installed side by side so that the cook can use more than one pot. The stove's three strong pot rests can support a range of commonly used pots, with round and flat bottoms. However, it is unsuitable for very small pots, or very wide ones such as the Ethiopian mtad (Adapted from How to Make an Upesi Stove, http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?cPath=21_62&products_id=304)

Photo Credits: Figure 3a, http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4071&cont ext=lbnl, p. 11, used with permission. Figure2b: ITDG Newsletter Sharing #13, used with permission

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a) b)

Photo Credits: Figure 4a, http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4071&cont ext=lbnl, p. 11, used with permission; Figure 4b, Fuel-Efficient Stoves Reduce Risk. USAID: Washington, DC; October, 2006, used with permission.
a) b)

Figure 4: The Avi Stove Named after Mr. Avi Hakim, CHF International Nyala staff, The Avi stove follows the standard ITDG design as promoted in Darfur IDP camps, with one retrofit proposed by Dr. Ashok Gadgil. The Avi features a cast iron grate (bought in India for approximately $0.50 US) placed over an opening cut out of the bottom. When this stove is set upon three bricks that lift it off the ground, air flows to the solid fuelwood, substantially improving combustion efficiency. The grate can also be made from pieces of locally available 0.5 cm diameter steel rod, cut into 18 cm lengths, costing approximately the same. The grate improves combustion efficiency and reduces smoke generation. The new design also includes vertical ventilation channels carved into the inner walls of the stove and three mud knobs added to the top to permit combustion air flow even when a tight-fitting large pot or a flat metal plate is being used for cooking. (Adapted from Christina Galitsky, Ashok Gadgil, Mark Jacobs and Yoo-Mi Lee,
Fuel Efficient Stoves for Darfur camps of Internally Displaced Persons, Report of Field trip to North and South Darfur, Nov. 16 - Dec.17, 2005, p. 10-11).

Photo Credit: Figure 5a,b, http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/economic_growth_and_trade/ener gy/publications/EGAT0020.PDF, p. 15, used with permission.

Figure 5a: The Rocket, assembled and awaiting collection Figure 5b: The Rocket, plastered and installed in an IDP kitchen Developed with the technical input of the Aprovecho Research Center, the Rocket is a 6 brick stove is made out of local clay mixed with rice husks (which provides insulating properties), molded into specially-shaped bricks, and fired with wood logs using traditional clamp kilns. The brickmakers bind the fired bricks together in clusters of six using thick wire. One brick is cut in half to make an opening for feeding fuel. This basic stove body can be installed in a kitchen by fixing it upright to the ground and plastering it with mud. Women can choose to build up thicker stove walls if they want greater strength and stability. Mass production of the bricks helps ensure uniform sizes and shapes, maintaining each stoves combustion chamber dimensions. Pots rest on three small stones placed at the top of the stove to allow for improved air circulation. (Adapted from USAIDs report on Fuel Efficient Stove Programs in IDP
Settings, Summary Evaluation Report Uganda, September 2007, p. 14-15).

Figure 6: The prototype Berkeley Darfur Stove (BDS) holding (a) a small mulah pot and (b) a large assida pot. BDS is an adapted Tara design with two modifications to address convective heat loss via the extended gap: 1) the horizontal length of the upper pot support brackets is reduced by 2mm each, allowing a round-bottomed pot to sink slightly lower into the stove body; 2) the top of the stove body features an erected wind-shield to block high horizontal winds from the extended gap while still allowing flue gases to escape vertically; this also ensures good thermal performance for a variety of pot sizes. (Adapted from Susan Amrose, G. Theodore Kisch,
Photo Credits (Figue 4a,b): http://darfurstoves.lbl.gov/d/lbnl116edevtestbds-2008.pdf, p. 11, used with permission. Charles Kirubi, Jesse Woo, and Ashok Gadgil, Development and Testing of the Berkeley Darfur Stove, March 2008, p. 7-8).

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 Exhibit 2: Fuel Efficient Stove I E Interventions33

33 3

Adapted from Ab bdelnour, S. & Bra anzei, O. (2008) Wa and peace in sub ar bsistence marketpla aces: The Negotiate Meaning of Gra ed assroots Developme ent Interventions in Da I arfur, presented at t Second Subsiste the ence Marketplaces Conference: Susta ainable Consumptio and Commerce for a Better World, University on of o Illinois, Chicago July 13-15, 2008. o,

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 Exhibit 3: Development Aid to Sudan and Darfur34

2500.0 TotalUSAIDtoSudan(millions) 2000.0 TotalODAreceived(millions)

1500.0

1000.0

500.0

0.0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 3500.0 3000.0 2500.0 2000.0 1500.0 1000.0 Oilproduction(bpd) 500.0 0.0 2003 2004 2005 2006 TotalUSAIDHumanitiarian AssistancetoDarfur(millions) TotalUSAIDtoSudan (millions) TotalODAreceived(millions)

Adapted from Abdelnour, S. & Branzei, O. (2008) War and peace in subsistence marketplaces: The Negotiated Meaning of Grassroots Development Interventions in Darfur, presented at the Second Subsistence Marketplaces Conference: Sustainable Consumption and Commerce for a Better World, University of Illinois, Chicago, July 1315, 2008.
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 Learning Objectives More than 3 billion people in the developing world who burn traditional biomass fuels -including wood and animal dung -- indoors for cooking and heating. The current cooking practice, according to the World Health Organization, traps high levels of pollutants in the living area and causes 1.6 million premature deaths every year, mainly among women and children35 The case illustrates the tensions, trade-offs, and adaptation challenges involved in managing sustainable development under extreme conditions and asks students to map the motivations and interventions of a complex set of local and international NGOs, donors, and local communities (including the communities of internally displaced persons in Darfur). The decision point in the case asks students to critically assess the prospects of manufacturing a superior fuel efficiency stove at an attractive production price, by stepping into the role of the new Sudan country director. Beyond understanding the specific challenges faced by each of the key players, students are asked to highlight the key priorities for CHF Sudan, and to reshuffle the organizational collaborations in ways that best further its engagement priorities in fuel efficient stove interventions. The case discussion also opens up a broader platform for exploring the collaborative and competitive dynamics between various organizations involved in post-crises international development interventions, and more generally the role of local and international NGOs in fostering peace readiness and post-conflict reconstruction after humanitarian crises. The case describes the dynamics of competition among NGOs providing international development in fuel efficient stoves. The decision is set in Darfur, four years after the humanitarian crisis. It reviews post-crisis development interventions focused on improving fuel efficiency, and contextualizes the players and their projects in the broader setting of Sudans social and economic instability and the global awareness and interest about the potential gains from fuel efficient stoves. Cast from the perspective of CHF International, a US-based organization which initiated operations in Sudan in 2004, with USAID funding, the case explores the complementary, overlapping and conflicting interests among the public, private, governmental and non-governmental organizations involved; it also shows the tension between micro grassroots projects and large-scale, international organization solutions to local issues and needs. The case asks students to contemplate whether and how economies of scale would bring the costs down to a tipping point where internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfuri camps could afford the benefits of greater efficiency and convenience. They also need to balance cost cutting considerations with alternative decision criteria for local development: the success of this project depends on IDPs preference among alternative stove providers which encompasses, in addition to fuel economies, the characteristics of the stoves themselves (i.e. quality, fuel efficiency), the engagement of the community in their production, and the ability to use and repair the stoves. The case has Ghotai Ghazialam reflect on the fuel efficiency of the design relative to alternative models available to IDPs in Darfur. The new country director questions how CHF could produce and distribute the stove locally and consider the implications of collaboration versus going it alone for its two-year local partner in Darfur, the Intermediate Technology Group, renamed Practical Action in 2005 (ITDG/PA), a grassroots NGOs advocating women involvement and empowerment. The case provides additional background on the motivations and decision priorities from the key local and international players in Darfurs fuel efficient stove interventions, including the ITDG/PA, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Aprovecho, the International Lifeline Fund, the USAID, and organizations representing local women IDPs.
http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/September/20070912133645lcnirellep0.8758814.html , last accessed on July 26, 2008.

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 Teaching Purposes: 1. To introduce students to the complex issues of managing sustainable development interventions under extreme conditions, offering a rich simulation for mapping, anticipating, and adjusting NGO strategies in post-crisis situations. 2. To discuss the practical challenges of sustainable development interventions by exploring the different roles, motivations, capacities, and actions of local and international NGOs and to discuss how key protagonists adjust their interventions by collaborating or competing with different organizations. 3. To challenge the students to apply their knowledge on strategic alliances and competitive dynamics to offering advice to NGOs fostering international development in developing countries testing, extending, and applying traditional models of competitive strategies under the double constraint of resource scarcity and conflict. 4. To probe the synergies and trade-offs between economic, environmental, and social value creation and especially the micro-strategizing involved in balancing the three priorities in specific interventions. 5. To illustrate the dilemmas faced by non-profit organizations in selecting collaborators and in addressing competitors in international development interventions; to apply strategic decision making and a sustainable value creation framework to scrutinize, adjust, and validate complex, evolving models of international development under extreme conditions.

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Widad Ali Abdel Rahman

Former Dean of the School of Management Studies Ahfad University for Women, Sudan Dr. Widad Ali Abdel Rahman is a specialist in women and gender studies. She has a background in business studies and management and a special interest in the theory and practice of women entrepreneurship. She is a Professor and former Dean of the School of Management Studies at the Ahfad University for Women. Dr. Rahman actively designs new training program and mentors Sudanese women entrepreneurs and actively collaborates with several national ministries and international organizations (UN Development Program, UN Global Compact, and the UN Population Fund).

A new player in Sudan, CHF should have continued to capitalize on the advantage of having a partner such as Practical Action who is local with positive history and good practice in the community. This creates competitive positioning which emerges from the grassroots, making people more accepting to the aims and goals of CHF. Furthermore, alignment with a partner that is socially accepted can allow CHF to capitalize and increase its competitive advantage through social acceptance. Community perceptions and ingenuity are disregarded in much of NGO programming. From its current activities, there is little reason for a beneficiary community to find CHF any more acceptable than the hundreds of other international NGOs currently operating in Sudan. What CHF should strive to do is to create a grassroots community-based competitive advantage. Such an approach would begin with a focus on the perceptions of people beneficiaries and end users in the community. It is not enough to simply expect the users to test whatever product is given to them. It would begin to examine their perceptions of the role of NGOs in general, CHF in particular. It would ask: to what extent does the community accept and are comfortable with CHF and its approach? To further strengthen CHFs positive perception and acceptance, CHF might focus on involvement of people through co-creation activities. This would involve local people in all aspects of production including design and dissemination in what might be seen as a participatory production approach. This approach would certainly require some level of training and building human capital, not simply the promotion or selling of a particular product or program. This in itself will provide a competitive advantage for CHF even if costs are associated, the social costs of not doing so are too high. Viewing costs from the perspective of social value, and not simply commercial, may justify a business decision to subsidize the production process itself in order to maximize social benefit. In other words there is a need for CHF to take a different perspective which entails conducting benefit/cost analysis from an angle focusing on 'human centered ' practices, not only the neo-classical economic rationale. Sustainability is ensured an opportunity for success - if CHF leaves or its funding for a particular project is restricted a human capacity approach focused on building social value may leave a community able to continue operation of a program of sustainable value creation. Of course contradictions will arise when a human-centred social benefit focus is in competition with traditional economic costing strategies, and this may be added to the trade-offs of adopting such development approaches.

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Dr. Bab biker A.B. B Badri

Pro ofessor and G General Coordinator of the R Rural Extensi Program ion Ahfad Uni iversity for W Women

Dr. Babiker Ba D adri is an acti researcher in the develo ive r opment issues associated wi the ith Darfur conflict. He consults w the World Bank and the UNIDO on D D with d Darfurs develop opment ne eeds and priva sector dev ate velopment in S Sudan. Dr. Ba adri coauthore several land ed dmark st tudies on livel lihoods under siege, includin joint studie with Tufts U ng es University in B Boston USA, York Univ U versity in Cana ada, and the Wo Bank. World Dr. Badri holds a doctorate i Human Geo D s in ography, Liveli ihoods and Resource Manag gement fr rom the Univer rsity of Liverpo UK and a Master of Scie ool, ence in renewa able energy fro the om University of Re U eading, UK. H teaches at th Ahfad Unive He he ersity for Wom where he i also men, is th General coo he ordinator of the Rural Extens sion Program. His areas of r research and i impact in nclude livelihoo renewable energies and development s ods, e studies.

With an e estimated fore estry depletion rate in Suda exceeding 4% per year and even gr n an reater rates of f deforestat tion in Darfur due to chang in liveliho r ges ood-coping st trategies post conflict the introduction of e n fuel effici stoves wa a must for Sudan. After the experime of the Re ient as ents enewable Ener Centre, th rgy he first fuel e efficient stove models intro e oduced in Sud were the Kenyan Jiko stove and the Forestry dan e Departme ents Jiko-mod dified Azza st tove. Both we steel stove with mud lining. Howev despite th ere es ver, he efficiency of those stov compared to the traditi y ves d ional tin stove the initial cost of the sto stood as a es, ove an obstacle to their marke o etability and d dissemination n. Stoves tha worked wit firewood as their main s at th source of ener were limi to the mu rgy ited ulti-pot station nary Thai stove or a simple modification of the three-s e stone stove su as the cla stove which did not allow for uch ay h variability in the cooki pot sizes w y ing which a famil might use. ly Despite th claimed eff he fficiency of th proposed m he metal stove, th were seve worries: initial cost, here eral technical expertise requ uired for man nufacturing an operation, and the avail nd lability of raw materials an w nd tools for m manufacturing Such stove were expen g. es nsive when co ompared with the potential of recycling readily ac ccessible tin oil containers and current ti stoves foun in any mar o in nd rket. Looking f forward, the critical issue r c remains, of co ourse, energy. Since bioma will remai the main so ass in ource of fuel for the Darfuria kitchen for the foreseeab future le r an r ble eaving women exposed to violence as th n hey collect wo for sale and consumpti ood ion, and adva ancing defores station in Dar research should cons rfur h sider alternative biomass fu such as br e uels riquetted grou und-nut shells stalks of hib s, biscus, okra o any locally or y ground se easonal crops. Critical to th protection of the environ . he nment and the protection o displaced e of women in Darfur, this fuel should b packaged w an efficie stove and distributed us n be with ent sing local market mechanism ms.

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 Dr. Ashok J. Gadgil

Senior Scientist and Deputy Director of Strategic Planning Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ashok Gadgil has a doctorate in Physics from UC Berkeley, and has three decades of research experience on energy use and indoor air transport in buildings in the industrial countries, and energy and environmental problems in the developing countries. He is an Adjunct Professor in Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley and a Senior Scientist, and Deputy Director (Strategic Planning) in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prof. Gadgil has several inventions and patents to his credit, and has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Pew Fellowship in 1991 for energy efficiency research applicable to the developing countries, the Discover Award in 1996, and the Tech Laureate Award in 2004, for drinking water disinfection for poor communities in the developing countries. His research interests include energy efficiency, drinking water treatment, indoor air quality, and computational fluid dynamics. He has authored over 75 papers in refereed archival journals, and over 100 conference papers, and is a technical consultant to several multilateral institutions and private sector organizations.

This case well illustrates the difficulties and dilemmas faced in working under high-stress and humanitarian crisis situations. Information flow and accuracy can be challenging in such situations (for example, note that the criticism from Mohamed Majzoub is of the initial design that he believed required three women to cook with this stove which was not the case.) CHF Sudan had no means to verify this assumption with either the field staff who were too busy with their main responsibilities or with Berkeley experts. As a result of these difficulties, inaccurate information becomes more widely disseminated, further complicating the issue. It turns out we indeed did address this right from summer of 2006 but the confusion illustrates the problems with the information flow. All organizations have stated and unstated agendas. NGOs and humanitarian agencies are no exception. While helping the distressed IDPs with various kinds of aid is the primary goal, the goal requires the need to generate income, pay salaries, keep good employees from leaving owing to instabilities and workrelated stress, keep their sponsors pleased by claiming victories and visible progress in the work, and be on the look out to keep competition for the same dollars from other NGOs at bay. Because of the dependence on funders there is a need for NGOs to ensure their solutions are viewed as successes. It can be embarrassing (and might be seen as a set back by funders) to have invested in disseminating one technical solution only to have it shown by others to be ineffective in the field. This particular problem is more prevalent in NGO work than in the business world, because unlike in the business world, the customers and funders are distinctly different entities, and might inhabit vastly different worlds. Funders too might have their own motives as illustrated and analyzed, for example, in the book The Anti-politics Machine (James Ferguson, 1992, University of Minnesotta Press). Because of these external pressures, some of the criticisms and comments that decision makers receive may be skewed and she would need to take that into account while making a good judgment call that bears in mind all the other issues. It should be obvious by now that no one (including researchers, like us at Berkeley) are free of observer bias, and this can lead to disagreements about what is the best course of action for effective and efficient dissemination of stoves. We wanted the stoves to be tested and re-tested with users, through successive improved versions, and also to require quality control on the production process just as would any factory manufacturing goods. CHF-Sudans priorities were different. They wanted to make as many stoves as possible, as quickly as possible, without interference in the process from researchers who wanted to ensure quality control on material, fabrication process, critical dimensions, and of course, user feedback. So, in the end we parted ways. CHF continues (as of 2008) to produce stoves of an earlier version (V5) of unknown quality, and the Berkeley team has started working with other NGOs to disseminate improved V11 stoves that are faster to assemble, more durable, consistently defect-free, and safer to use. 19

Mohamed Majzoub Fidiel

Country Director Practical Action Sudan

A Sudanese, 54 years old development specialist with a basic degree in Geography specialized in Regional Development from Khartoum University (1981), Mohamed Majzoub has a cumulative development experience of 27 years of work in both rural and urban development projects mainly with NGOs;18 years of this experience was with Practical Action as a Country Director in Sudan. He worked in food security, agroforestry, water & sanitation, shelter, rural transport, energy, small scale manufacturing, vocational training, small enterprise development and micro-finance. Mohamed Majzoub has written over 25 papers and participated numerous task forces and committees that provided and continue to provide advice to the Government on poverty alleviation, employment, voluntary work and small enterprise development. He is also a trustee of a number of local NGOs that work in development in Sudan.

The case study provides a very balanced and honest overview of the efforts of the different NGOs, ripe for additional analyses and foresight. A recent June/July 2008 USAID evaluation could shed additional light by offering a clearer picture of the performance and social acceptance of the different models. There is no stove that is 100% perfect and suits all requirements. However, the required stove must suit the most pressing local conditions, which can be summarized as: The design can easily be manufactured by the housewives themselves so that when they return home, they will have the requisite knowledge for continued implementation; If the stoves are commercialized, they must be affordable and easily manufactured locally within the manufacturers capacity and they must use cheap and locally available raw materials which can be accessed sustainably and without subsidies; The design must suit the local culture and cooking habits; The stove users must have sustaining access to the design they adopt. Practical Action recommended the mud stoves for dissemination, because it met and meets all of the above criteria. Being in Darfur for 20 years gave us the advantage of being knowledgeable of the area, the people, their needs and their capacities to produce and accept new ideas and interventions. We are also knowledgeable of the energy sector in general and stoves in particular as I have been involved in stoves promotion since 1983 and we got the support from the 2 most knowledgeable consultants in this field. Accordingly, we believe that our judgment for technology choice for the people of Darfur should be trusted. Yet despite this strong position, other sister NGOs started reinventing the wheel promoting other stoves, leading to loss of huge amount of money, time and opportunities for reaching more people with a proven technology that was cost effective and easily mass outreaching through the turnover of train the trainer approach.

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Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
Product Design and Testing Consultant Programme for Basic Energy Conservation Crispin Pemberton-Pigott is active in the design and testing of improved stoves with both ProBEC (Programme for Basic Energy Conservation) in SADC (a group of 14 countries in Southern Africa). He is also the founder and MD of New Dawn Engineering (www.newdawnengineering.com) in Swaziland. He has lived in Africa for more than 30 years and worked in 17 African countries. Pemberton-Pigott started working on improved stoves 25 years ago. He earned three different awards for stove design including the top Southern African Chairmans Award for industrial design from DISA in 2004 for the Vesto Stove.

Stoves, cooking and communities are immensely complicated, taxing every human-devised invention to the limit. Thus is difficult to be all things to all people in a time of crisis. Everyone wants to offer solutions that have some marketing advantage over the offerings of competitors. In sales-speak: unique selling points (USPs). There are many facets for a stove NGO to consider. Two are value for money, fast roll-out, at scale, a sizeable benefit and another is community consulting, potspecific, locally produced, gender aware, sustainable. Many stoves have one or more USPs and no stove has them all. It is clear from the case study that the stresses that arose between implementing organisations centered on claims for the relative benefit of their different products as promoted in Darfur. The Berkeley Lab staff noticed a Practical Action (PA) mud stove that in their opinion was missing its pot rests on top so that when a flat or round pot was sat upon it, the exit path of combustion gases was blocked. The Lab visitors immediately rectified this by adding clay pot rests to elevate the pot a little and let it breathe - big improvement and went on to assess its performance in a set of public demonstrations. Nevertheless their report notes the poor performance of this inexpensive re-improved clay and donkey dung appliance particularly in relation to the 50% fuel saving claims advanced by PA. Later in the case study there is a photo of a different improved version of the same Avi stove. It is clear from PAs reports and photos that the pot was not supposed to sit on top of the mud stove but inside it and had no need for the added clay bumps. The heavy mud stove is carefully sized, surrounding the pot to provide stability when stirring very stiff local porridge. When the stoves are used with the pots for which they are designed, 50% of fuel is save, as demonstrated by PA just as publicly after their claims were challenged. It may be helpful to analyse the case using known business models. Berkeley Labs approach can be compared with the Microsoft business model: originally developed by enthusiasts, it is a one-size-fitsmost approach based on a set of design principles (software) claimed to function well with just about any available hardware. It works well in the lab. People can adapt to the existing technology and the coming upgrade will have any remaining issues resolved. The design principles are not negotiable. PAs approach is more like Research in Motion (BlackBerry). There is a fee up front and their vast network permanently nestles into your life delivering a host of attractive features, upgraded every year: community involvement, gender awareness, empowerment of the disenfranchised, local production from local materials, at scale roll-out potential, training programmes, close monitoring and tracking of design 21

 drift and attention to the Millennium Development Goals. It always comes at the additional cost of providing a slew of outside players. You pay and pay again. CHF Internationals approach is somewhat like Daimler-Benz. Just buy a good one and you wont have to change the body for a guaranteed 5 years. It works well, looks good, retains its resale value and there are no additional expenses save occasional maintenance parts. The characteristics of other business models are evident. A Kentucky Fried Cooking (KFC) approach would have a centralised design and management core, systematised procurement, production equipment, training and a carefully researched value proposition. Quality and delivery are assured. Promotion would be regional. The producers follow the recipes for a narrow product range. What about an IDP Disney Camp? This model gives complete command and control to a corporate body. Critical path analysis would have them early on create more fuel by paying people with food and fuel to plant bushes, weeds and trees. Stoves, fuel and training would have a strong brand appeal and a theme song. It is much easier to plant weeds and bushes than to build fuel efficient stoves. The payoff is bigger, earlier and assured. The problem is not entirely on of design. It is a mismatch between the fuel supply and the traditional stoves need for it. Once Disney Camp is running, sell tickets, donkey rides and souvenirs to culturo-eco-tourists. Improving the stoves is obvious but given the physical demands imposed by the food (stirring) on the stoves, I would also take the innovate, recycle and re-use approach: change the pots so they dont need so much heat in the first place. I mean much more than a crocheted insulating lid-cosy, though that would help save fuel. Melt and recast everyones pots adding fins on the bottom to double their heat transfer efficiency after the style of Dale Andreattas work, adding a hip-lip to seal properly to the stove. The raw material is available locally in the form of existing pots. The finned pots would retain the globe-shaped interior demanded by the cooks while the fins would provide better heat transfer. Any improved stove would add savings. Supplemental aluminum can be obtained from lost, smashed or abandoned vehicle parts. Notoriously frail and shaky solar cookers on which porridge is impossible to stir usually have a lot of aluminum in them. My choice of stove? The sunken-pot mud stove with under air coming through an imported cast iron grate. Brilliant, local, cheap, strong, effective. When the economy re-starts, a Tsotso Stove metal insert in the same basic structure. Charcoal for tea? Restricting the air flow when cooking over an enclosed fire will manufacture charcoal in the stove worth about as much as or more than the wood used to make it. Free cooking. Also consider the business models inspired by TATA, W.R. Grace, Henry Ford, Dell, Starbucks, MacDonalds, Tupperware, Nike and Nokia. Their success is no accident. Carbon trading and real world behaviours. Despite their current popularity and promise, I have little energy for what amounts to a carbon-funded project rescue package. Any business model that requires permanent, external funding with exorbitant monitoring and evaluation overheads is doomed once the money stops. Selling a $40 stove containing $25 worth of metal for $7 is simply begging artisans to tear them apart to access the cheap raw material. Final Test. Calculate the gross cost per beneficiary of three different stove business models. Which model satisfies the most customers in a sustainable manner after one year? 22