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Africa Solar Cooking
64Solar Panel
Solar cooking can help fend off any impending environmental calamities in Africa. Instead of wood fire or fossil fuels, communities can cook their food by harnessing the heat of the sun with a solar oven.
This is an incredibly cheap and effective alternative to traditional cooking. According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund, with a single solar stove, families stand to save up to 30 liters of kerosene and a ton of firewood each year. For the environment, this means an average of one ton of carbon dioxide reduced annually. This amazing statistic opens up opportunities for Africa to reverse the widespread environmental degradation caused by charcoal burning and diminishing forest cover in the country.
Solar-powered ovens can easily be introduced to communities, helping families save on energy costs while preserving the environment. Because it uses renewable energy from the sun, cooking through solar energy produces no pollution and no greenhouse gases.
While solar cooking is by no means the cure-all for Africa's problems, it nonetheless presents a good place to begin. With enough vision, and with a little help from solar-powered ovens, African governments and non-governmental organizations can finally address not just environmental damage but also the widespread poverty and hunger that come with it.
Benefits Of Using Solar
Using Solar Units to provide Cooking, Lighting and other such electrical applications comes down to a few factors
1. Reducing the use of deadly products like Kerosene or Fossil Fuels that when used in confined spaces can produce Toxic Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Gases unless a chimney is installed.
2. Where Kerosene is used as a main source of heating for cooking, the price is sometime subsidized by the local Government to prevent the dismantling of forests for cooking material.
3. Solar panels used for cooking do not give off any hazards in regarding toxics or vapours.
4. Solar ovens can pasturize water
5. The food never burns so cuts down on cleaning.
6. The food cooks in its own juices.
7. Cooks hot enough to kill bacteria.
8. Cooks hot enough to bake bread.
9. Will cook in ambient temperature below freezing providing the sun is shining
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Are solar cookers affordable for Africans? For a continent mired in poverty, the cost may not be an option.
Tamara could you afford your 1st microwave oven....or your 1st flat screen LCD television... affordability is up to the purchaser who wishes to own one...Unlike us in the western civilized world, people in africa actually share things thus making things affordable to them and there community... sorry for being blunt, having a bad day...
Tamara,
I made a solar cooker that uses cardboard pallet sheets and foil. I made it in less than an hour and it works 4 years later. Solar cookers don't have to cost $200 to $300 to cook meals. Solar cookers international has free patterns to make and sell low cost solar cookers. They also have the Cook-It which is simple to make or inexpensive to buy.
Thanks TAMARA for your comment, Its easy saying they dont have to cost $200-$300 but in that is what companies are looking for and yes you can build one cheaper yourself and i already have my own designs for ovens.. cheers mike
Hi Michael! All the best for your plans. When I lived in Senegal the last decade, we were trying to establish solar cooking using big pots, laid out with aluminum foil. That was the cheapest way to do it, but a steady supply of the foil was not possible in remote areas at the time. But I think that now, with all the new roads built, it's become easier. If you are interested to get in the Senegal/Mali/Cameroon market, drop me a note or see www.afronum.com. I'm in IT biz, also in development, but on the educational side. Best regards Jurg
Hi Michael, i would like to inform Tamara that i come from Kenya and people can afford Solar ovens without any problems. The situation right now is so bad that Kerosene and charcoal are too expensive not forgetting the number of people who die each day due to carbon dioxide from Charcoal burners & Cooking stoves that can explode anytime. Lung ailments from the smoke e.t.c. In Cities, Towns and Rural areas people use these kind of methods to get Fire or Light.I hope Tamara will read this and think outside the box: Each human being on this earth should take the responsibility to protect the Environment.It is affecting us all.Thank you.
Carbon Dioxide 4 months ago
It's nice that there's an alternative to firewood, and until appropriate infrastructure is installed, that's a good thing, but in all honesty, carbon dioxide and "greenhouse gases" are only a problem in the minds of followers of a religion known as "Anthropogenic Global Warming". There is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is, or will ever be, a significant hazard to mankind. So, while reducing firewood use has some pluses in Africa, the better long term solution is to create the infrastructure required to get more of Africa onto some kind of a power grid and away from traditional cooking methods.