Eritrea is experiencing a rural energy crisis. Due to drought, desertification, war and increasing population, there are no longer the forest resources in Eritrea necessary to meet rural household energy needs.

The depletion of wood stocks has a history that goes back more than 50 years. During the height of Italian colonialism from the 1920's to the 1940's, the juniper forests which were prevalent in the Eritrean highlands were harvested to meet the demand for charcoal in the colonial capital of Asmara. Then several years later the situation went from bad to worse. During the war for independence from Ethiopia which lasted from 1961 to 1991, the occupying army would systematically remove forest in order to deny cover for the rebels. On top of these historical factors, Eritrea has been experiencing a systematic decrease in precipitation since the 1940's, which is probably related to increasing ocean temperatures. Add to this a population which is growing at the rate of 3% per year, and the rural fuel supply situation is completely unsustainable.

It is therefore a high priority for Eritrea to develop alternatives to current traditional rural energy supplies and use patterns. This requires a set of parallel strategies including

1. Encouraging conversion to commercial or alternative energy supplies

2. Increasing efficiency of energy use.

The need for increased efficiency of household energy use has prompted the Department of Energy to conduct a household energy use survey to assess the situation, and to begin research programs on stove efficiency improvement.

The existing stove efficiency research programs builds on a tradition of practical research that exists distributed throughout the Eritrean population, and that was also conducted in the liberated areas during the independence struggle. We must acknowlege that any current efforts at formal research build on these important traditions and experiences.

Formal theoretical stove efficiency research in post-liberation Eritrea perhaps began as a senior thesis project undertaken by Ezana Negusse in the 1995/6 academic year. In this project, Mr. Negusse undertook to understand the basic heat balance and thermodynamics of the cooking of taita, or enjera. This study essentially rediscovered a fact implicitly known throughout the Eritrean population: the most effective method for saving energy in the cooking of taita rests in the cooking method or style. The cooking of thick, moist taita is the most effective method of saving energy.

But the study by Mr. Negusse also revealed important details regarding the heat flows in a mogogo or taita cooker. Most significantly, theoretical model simulation studies indicated that the most effective method for increasing stove efficiency is to increase the thermal conductivity of the cooking plate. This can be done by changing from a clay to an iron cooking plate.

Recent research by the Department of Energy has focused on verifying and quantifying this hypothesis. The hypothesis is essentially verified, and future research will examine other design modifications and perform field testing of improved designs.

Contacts:

Eritrean Energy Research and Training Center: