Thomas Gichuru was out to make a difference. Passionate about clean energy and conserving the environment, he invented an energy-saving jiko that cut firewood usage significantly, but the people he presented it to wanted more.
He took up the challenge, and the chick-rearing cooking stove was born.
“The jiko reduces firewood consumption by two thirds and we confirmed this through a survey,” says Gichuru, director of Tree is Life, the NGO behind the innovation.
How does this technology work?
The dual-purpose jiko is a molded fireplace that consists of two ceramic liners, constructed in kitchens in rural areas at a cost of Sh10,000.
As an integrated jiko, it serves two purposes — one as an energy-saving jiko, and the other as a chick brooder.
With the brooder, chicks do not necessarily need the mother hen to brood over them; so they are placed in the brooder immediately they are hatched. A farmer can raise a minimum of 70 chicks in the brooder, he explains.
To make the jiko efficient, the opening where one feeds the firewood is reduced, which means a farmer does not need to put a lot of wood on that spot.
Another strategy is that one can only feed firewood that is one foot in length, unlike the three stone cooker which requires firewood that is more than one metre in length.
No power bills
Farmers who have used the technology share their experiences: Mariah Njeri from Kasuku, Nyahururu County, got the jiko installed in her kitchen last year and is ecstatic about it.
“I plant crops and keep goats and cows but I was not able to keep chicken because this area is very cold and keeping them outside exposed them to many predators like hawks,” she says.
She says after she installed the jiko, she now usually keeps up to 60 kienyeji layers at a go.
“The jiko is amazing. I get double benefits because I use it for cooking, and that heat is the one that raises the chicks,” she says.
Farmer experiences
The farmer does not need to keep checking the temperature in the brooder, as the chicks self-regulate naturally by moving to the cooler areas when need be.
“There are no power bills and I don’t even store piles of firewood in my house anymore. It uses a few sticks of firewood,” says Njeri.
Forest conservation
Gichuru who has a degree in forestry and a Masters degree in Natural Resource Management and Economics says many clients have attested to this fact.
“In the rural households, a woman will tell you she used to use one head load of firewood, which would go for a week, but with this jiko, the same volume of wood goes for three weeks,” he says.
Though this technology has many benefits, Gichuru admits it has a few down sides.
One challenge that Gichuru faced at the beginning is that despite the fact that a lot of forests were being saved in this way, a lot of wood from the forests was still being used in the jikos. To counter this, the organisation came up with a programme dubbed ‘52 Trees on a Farm’.
Through this campaign, they encourage farmers to not only install the energy-saving jiko, but also plant the fast-growing Grevillea Tree, which translates to a tree per week for the 52 weeks of the year.
“With these trees, a family of between 5 to 10 members can comfortably use the firewood, with a lot left over which they can sell if they choose to, thus conserving our forests,” says Gichuru.
One can use charcoal in the stove, but they go out of their way to discourage its usage due to toxic gases and wastage of fuel.
Poisonous gases
“We discourage charcoal because of the carbon monoxide which is lethal, even worse than firewood,” he explains.
He says most kilns used in Kenya for burning charcoal have a low efficiency rate, with a recovery rate of less than 30 per cent.
“That means if you chop one cubic meter of wood, you will only get a third of it in charcoal, which contributes to massive deforestation,” he says.
This environment conservation model made Gichuru’s innovation win an award from the National Environment Trust Fund (Netfund) in 2015.
His innovation has also been picked up by some donors trying to make it even better.
Another adjustment is that the jiko needed a chimney to help with smoke emission to prevent indoor pollution, while at the same time retaining the warmth needed for the brooder.
“We are in the process of including a smoke jacket where the smoke is emitted and we already have its design to achieve that balance,” he says. “It has to be done in a way that it only emits the poisonous gases. This becomes a problem when people are using the green wood, because it has resins, gum and all those hydrocarbons that are toxic when inhaled. With dry wood this is not much of a problem. We have done a few trials with some level of success.”
So far Gichuru says the uptake among poultry farmers in Central has been positive.
For poultry farmers interested in the technology can visit the Tree is Life organisation at the Nyahururu Catholic Secretariat in town.
