Access to clean cooking technology (such as gas or electric stoves) can greatly improve health outcomes. Approximately 3 million people depend on biomass fuels such as wood, coal, and dung for cooking to cook with (source: WHO article on household air pollution). The indoor air pollution generated whilst cooking indoors has serious, negative health impacts, with women and children in particular being affected. In fact the World Health Organisation (WHO) notes:

“3 billion people worldwide – almost 40% of the global population – rely on polluting, open fires or inefficient stoves to prepare their meals and heat their homes. These stoves burn using fuels like wood, charcoal, coal, animal dung, and kerosene.” - Source: WHO article on household air pollution

Kartoza has previously worked on projects that support the provision of access to electricity in order to support ESMAP / the World Bank's quest to support countries seeking to achieve the goals set out in SDG 7. Now we are pleased to announce a new partnership agreement between the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), World Resources Institute, KTH – division of Energy Systems (KTH-dES) and Kartoza. By integrating and analyzing data on demand for and supply of clean cooking solutions, CCE will support data-driven planning, coordination, and decision-making.

Addressing the problem of providing access to clean cooking technologies has a spatial dimension. There are multiple criteria to consider including the Natural Gas and electricity supply networks, costs and availability of clean fuels, economic viability of introducing new fuel sources into an underserved area, population, infrastructure such as roads and dwelling locations and more. In our project we will leverage platforms and open source technologies to build the platform. These include tools such as the WRI's Energy Access Explorer, and potentially the OnSSET electrification planning tool (of which KTH is a leading contributor and will repurpose for Clean Cooking modelling). These will be augmented with staple favourites such as PostgreSQL, PostGIS and web technologies to build an innovative new platform to support the planning process for introducing clean cooking technologies to communities that previously did not have access.

At Kartoza we are pleased to be contributing to the project which fits so well into our company ethos of leveraging open source technology to support the upliftment of humanity. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of this collaborative effort at the end of 2021!

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