Mukuru Clean Stoves

I am looking to learn innovative business practices from a network of partners, executives and global decision makers. As we work on scaling our model, the radically diverse group of social impact influencers will help equip my business with the necessary insight on product development which will enable us to be more proficient in deducing the pain points and needs of our target market, iterating existing products to match customer needs and leverage that knowledge to scale our business faster and in a sustainable way.

Mukuru Clean Stoves, East Africa’s only women-led, manufactured, managed and distributed cookstove value-chain has piloted the model in 2 counties, established demand; which in the coming years, far exceeds Mukuru’s ability to supply. To take advantage of these partnerships and realize employees, communities and households potential, Mukuru needs to invest heavily to hire, train existing and new employees, invest in new production facilities and distribution hubs, and support customer financing options. 

The Elevate Prize will enable us to scale our operations into 3 major counties, build another production facility, employ 10 new artisans, 5 new field officers, partner with 100 new sales agents and reach 100,000 more households by 2023.

Life for a young girl orphaned at the age of 10 years growing up in Mukuru, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi was tough, risky and unbearable. By sixteen I was a teenage mom and I had to drop out of school to figure out a way to fend for myself and my daughter. My first job was selling charcoal within the slum community and it was the only fuel I could afford. My daughter and I kept suffering from respiratory tract infections and when she turned two she suffered a severe burn injury from a traditional stove.

After a two year break from school, I was finally able to save enough for tuition and I enrolled in an adult school – which opened my eyes to the health hazards caused by charcoal and other harmful solid fuels. An enthusiast of science and social studies, I wanted to inspire fellow women to lead the fight against household air pollution in Africa!

I founded Mukuru Clean Stoves; a social enterprise that produces clean, affordable and reliable cook stoves targeting under-served markets to help mothers keep their children safe, save on fuel consumption and reduce household air pollution.

Burning solid fuels such as charcoal and agricultural waste in open fires and traditional stoves exposes families to air pollution levels as much as 50 times greater than the WHO guidelines for clean air.
36 million Kenyans have their health negatively impacted due to exposure to household air pollution, 84% still rely on harmful solid fuel for cooking and 18,000 deaths are attributed to HAP every year.
Women and children are disproportionately affected by the dangerous effects of HAP, as they are the ones who spend the most time in the kitchen.
Families at the base of the economic pyramid earn an average of $40-$100 monthly income and spend one third on fuel consumption. The available interventions, such as LPG,are un-affordable and inaccessible to these low-income households.
Mukuru Clean Stoves is the first woman-owned factory in East Africa that recycles waste metal to produce improved cookstoves with the aim of reducing household air pollution and fuel consumption in low income households.

The virtues of replacing traditional stoves with improved cook stoves are well documented, and benefits include reducing exposure to hazardous
air pollutants (HAPs), lowering burns risk and reducing fuel consumption, costs and cooking time. However, while the market in Kenya for
improved cook stoves is one of the most mature, affordability and accessibility of improved cook stoves remain two of the primary barriers to
adoption at scale and millions of households persist with unsustainable methods
Mukuru Clean Stoves is specifically addressing the affordability and accessibility problems confronting improved cook stoves. Through utilizing
recycled materials, establishing partnerships with MFIs, local women business owners, and ultimately, incorporating the knowledge and expertise
women throughout the entire value-chain, we have been able to reduce the production costs, whilst maximizing and optimizing the distribution
network, hence streamlining the pathway to scale.

Our vision is to eradicate household air pollution in under-served communities in Africa. In doing so, we address a number of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
Mukuru Clean Stoves makes clean energy more affordable (SDG 1 and 7), benefits women and gender equality profoundly by empowering
women to be problem solvers (SDG 5), creates employment opportunities and stimulates productive use within manufacturing and recycling
(SDG 8, 9 and 12) and reduces use of fossil fuels (SDG 13).

We measure our impact by the number of households that have adopted our cook stoves (45,000), the amount of savings made on fuel consumption(USD $2 per week per household, or a total of USD $360,000 per month), the amount of GHG emissions avoided (76,502 Tonnes of CO2e), the number of women business owners working as our sales agents(107, with an increased household income of USD $7 per week), the number of people benefiting from cleaner air in their homes (225,000) and the number of local youth trained and employed as artisans (18).