Uganda-UK Clean Cooking Programme Launch

By Dr Will Clements

Summary

On Friday 9^th August 2024, the UK Government, in partnership with the Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD), launched a £5m 2-year Clean Cooking programme in Kampala, Uganda.

See a 90-second summary of the day here, a 30-second snapshot here, a 4-minute overview here, and the full livestream here.

As part of the programme, MECS will be working with MEMD on the following:

• Building up a sustainable supply chain of 10,000 high quality electric cooking appliances across the country.
• Training 600 technicians in repair and maintenance of electric cooking appliances.
• Developing a national ‘Standards & Labelling’ program. 
• Piloting an institutional electric cooking programme in 100 schools across Uganda.

In addition, the programme will establish a high-impact Clean Cooking Unit within MEMD through the Global Green Growth Institute. It is also set to deliver clean cooking solutions for 6,000 households (30,000 people) within informal settlements through ICLEI Africa (Local Governments for Sustainability – Africa) and their ENACT programme.

The launch at Kampala saw live cooking demonstrations by experts and was attended by key stakeholders, food enthusiasts, media representatives and many more. The launch will be followed by a National Behaviour Change campaign focusing on accelerating eCooking adoption in schools, religious institutions and public and cultural spaces through awareness raising activities, led by the National Renewable Energy Platform (NREP).

Story of the day

The IEA Clean Cooking in Africa Summit, held on 14^th May 2024, in Paris, included the UK announcement of £8.5 million for Tanzania and Uganda by Lord Benyon (read more on the summit here). Friday the 9^th of August saw the launch of this programme in Uganda, with a focus on the eCooking projects MECS Programme, MEMD and NREP are collaborating to deliver. In this blog I point to some of the brilliant moments and soundbites from the day.

The livestream began with a testimony from a working mother (30 seconds): “I just set my Electric Pressure Cooker (EPC), time it, go to work. Then when it is time, I call her (her daughter), and tell her, check in the EPC, the food is ready. So as a working mother, it has really really changed my life.” This was the first of many stories and testimonies of the benefits of eCooking already felt by Ugandans today. The eCooking elements of the new Clean Cooking Programme aim to scale up eCooking so that those benefits are felt by tens of thousands of Ugandans across the country.

Next, we heard from Victoria Komuhangi, eCooking trainer and specialist (7 mins). She described how she used to be scared of cooking with electricity, fearing high costs and worrying about safety, but now she knows “my initial fears were wrong”. On the EPC’s convenience, she said “you switch it on, and leave it alone.” “You do not need to babysit the food”. On its versatility: “You can cook virtually anything, any of the local food you can think of.” And on affordability: “If you own a smartphone, and you’re connected to power, there’s no reason you should be using charcoal for cooking”. This is an interesting point – she’s suggesting that if you can afford to buy a smartphone, you can afford to buy an EPC. Victoria is the star of 6 Ugandan eCooking segments of Shamba Shape Up – read this blog for more.

Then it was time to cook! Lunch for the large crowd of key eCooking sector stakeholders was provided through the use of five or six PowerUP EPCs. Head Chef Henry Wanyama, who runs The Culinary School Uganda, led a team of very special guests including Honourable Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu (Minister of Energy and Mineral Development) and Her Excellency Ambassador Kate Airey (British High Commissioner to Uganda). The team demonstrated how to cook a variety of much-loved Ugandan foods from across the country in the EPCs: Matoke, Atapa/Kalo (millet bread), Beef, Potatoes, and Beans. The Honourable Minister got things going by showing everyone how to cook matoke, using banana leaves for cushioning (2 mins).

Next, Head Chef Henry took charge (3 mins), explaining that Ambassador was going to cook Beef and the Minister was going to cook Potatoes, starting with the Ambassador. On beef stew: “You put in 1 litre [of water], you get exactly 1 litre back. No evaporation.” The Ambassador was amazed that the Beef would take only 7 minutes to cook in the EPC once it had pressurised: “I’m buying one now, now I know it’s 7 minutes!” The preheat, pressurisation period generally takes about 5-15 minutes, meaning that the beef stew would be ready in only 20 minutes, approximately. Chef Henry’s top tip for the potatoes was to use banana leaves, to get that taste we all crave when cooking local food, as the EPC preserves their natural flavour.

While the food was cooking, Patrick Tutembe of the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA), took the microphone (4 mins). As Principal Economist at ERA, Patricks knows about costs, and proclaimed that with an EPC, you will save a lot on energy costs. He explained that you can cook Meat Stew with less than 0.4 units (kWh), costing less than 400 Ugandan shillings, and highlighted the need to spread the word on this to everyone spending 4,000 Ugandan shillings on charcoal to cook the same meal. In 2021, the regulator ERA developed a cooking electricity tariff. Patrick said that the tariff is still in the development stage, but should provide a signal to the population that electricity is a viable and cost-effective option for cooking.

After Patrick’s inspiring words, Ambassador Kate Airey gave her first ever speech in an apron (8 minutes). She explained that eCooking is a “remarkable win win win win” – sustainable energy, better health, environmental conservation, and reduced cost of living. She thanked MEMD for their tireless efforts, as well as our own Dr Simon Batchelor OBE and Professor Ed Brown for their pioneering work bringing eCooking into the conversation. With Uganda’s ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) target of transitioning 65% of the population to clean cooking by 2030, in line with their Third National Development Plan (NDP III), the Ambassador assured everyone that EPCs would play a vital part in the journey towards that target.

Next up was our very own Professor Ed Brown (5 mins), dialling in from Loughborough University, discussing Uganda’s eCooking journey and the “innovative, ambitious, deliverable set of activities for delivering eCooking scale up” that make up the new programme, which we are looking forward to working on with Uganda’s eCooking sector. He also highlighted the global progress made towards clean cooking, in particular the Global eCooking Coalition (GeCCo) and the African Development Bank’s recent commitment of 20% of their funding to clean cooking.

The Honourable Minister then took centre stage (28 mins), delivering an impassioned and engaging speech on the need for modern cooking. She described how charcoal is “too expensive… not affordable anymore” (short), and told a very personal story about the loss of her sister likely due to indoor air pollution (2 mins). She was then very pleased to be informed that her next meeting had been cancelled and she could stay for the lunch she had helped to cook with the EPCs (1 min)!

She also spoke about the need for integrated energy planning, to upgrade the electricity network to support eCooking, to “plan electricity for eCooking” (2 mins). She described LPG as a useful cooking fuel for standby use, that people can use when the power goes, acknowledging that electricity is the cheapest cooking fuel available (2 mins). She finished her brilliant speech by calling for the Uganda National Alliance on Clean Cooking (UNACC) to pull all players in the sector together to scale modern cooking (2 mins), before thanking her team at MEMD and the British government.

After the key speeches, it was time to eat. But first, the results were in! Dr Nicholas Mukisa of the National Renewable Energy Platform (NREP) revealed how much energy and how many shillings had been spent on cooking lunch (3 mins). Once at pressure, each dish took about 5-15 minutes in the EPC to cook. The beans consumed 0.43 units (kWh), costing just 407 UGX, while the matoke only required 0.29 units and 275 UGX. Therefore, the two dishes cost a combined 682 UGX. In comparison, the Uganda eCookbook found bean stew and matoke cooked with charcoal to cost a combined 1,076 UGX, and that was before the charcoal ban led to continually rising prices of charcoal. Overall, cooking the five foods consumed a total of 1.34 units at a cost of only 1,269 UGX.

So yes, it was cheap, but how did it taste?! Ivan Lule of the National Planning Authority was very impressed (1 min), particularly with the meat which he found to be “so tender”, and the sweet potatoes which retained their tasty natural flavour. Further glowing reviews came from Benjamin Zeitlyn of the British High Commission Kampala (1 min), and the Honourable Minister herself (1 min), who said that the meat and beans in particular were excellent.

Overall, this was a very exciting and engaging launch and lunch, inspiring all those working so hard in Uganda’s clean cooking sector (and their taste buds) to keep aiming towards that common goal of modern cooking for all, together.

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Featured Image: Launch attendees hosted by the British High Commission, Kampala. Credit: Tina Wamala, British High Commission Uganda