Suraj Wahab, co-founder of Toyola Energy Cookstoves in Ghana, Africa, "didn't see coal pots [stoves], but a market of four million [Ghanaians] no one was selling to." In Ghana, Toyola has been able to make inroads with its 40-percent-more-efficient models, sold for prices as low as $7. Toyola sold roughly 140,000 cookstoves to households and "chop bars," or local restaurants, since 2006, including 51,000 stoves last year, says a report in National Geographic, "Protecting Health And The Planet With Clean Cookstoves".
One of the reasons why Toyola has been successful is that it has benefited from connecting the reduced emissions from cook stoves to the larger global issue of climate change and earn carbon credits, becoming only the second cook stove project in the world to do so.
The Toyola business model combines local practices with global linkages. Toyola operates with 200 employees in a decentralized operation across five locations in Ghana and one in Togo. The issue of reaching the last mile is addressed by "stores" which are trucks that deliver cookstoves and has sales activists who sell both the concept and the product. The big A of affordability gets handled often through credit and by encouraging savings.
At the global level, Toyola is an outcome of a USAID cookstove training program in which the founders Wahab and Ernest Kyei had participated. The initial investment -- and the potential for carbon credits to keep down the cost of stoves and to finance growth -- came from US-based E+Co. A carbon credit of up to $20 per stove more than offsets the higher production costs of building stoves with ceramic liners, and provides funds for expansion.
According to the National Geographic report, Toyola thus far has received revenues from the sale of 51,230 tons of carbon credits for cookstove use between August 31, 2007 and September 8, 2009.
Photo Courtesy: E+Co
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