Halima's Prize Winning Stove In Dafur

Halima, a 28-year-old-mother has designed a stove that burns efficiently, consumes less wood and produces less smoke as compared to her partakers in a contest conducted by World Food Programme (WFP) in Northern Darfur. The contest was among local women who were trained by WFP to see who could design the most efficient model.

Halima has won a US $300.00 cash prize for the stove and its innovative design which can burn anything from wood to cow dung to household waste. Halima learned the laws of thermodynamics and the skill to make an efficient stove during a training course organised by WFP as part of its Safe Access to Firewood and Alternative Energy (SAFE) initiative in Northern Darfur.

Halima has named the stove Sabrin after the name of a dear friend and proudly shows the way the pot sits over the cooking surface for maximum use of the heat. “It produces less smoke and saves me time,” she says proudly. “Instead of spending hours and hours gathering wood, I can look after my family and work in my vegetable garden.”

In the arid plains of northern Darfur, gathering firewood takes hours and exposes women to the threat of belligerence; and also a lot of deforestation takes place, increasing the possibilities of drought and floods. The stoves that WFP has trained the local women on; are fuel efficient as they consume around two-thirds less wood than the traditional way of cooking which means women not having to spend a lot of time rummaging around for wood, as per WFP report.

These stoves produce much less smoke, the cause of deadly indoor air pollution, which kills over 1.5 million people every year.Halima, however feels that one of the best things about her stove is that it’s safe. She can walk away from the stove while her food is cooking and can run errands without worrying as in case of cooking on an open fire.

The project was aimed at scaling up distribution of fuel-efficient and “improved mud” stoves to assist almost 100,000 women in North Darfur.

Photo Courtesy: World Food Programme

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