- Date
- 12th March 2025
- Categories
- eCooking
By Jane Spencer (14th February, Dar es Salaam)
The Tanzania eCooking Scale and Support Programme began in earnest in June 2024 and comprises six work streams that dovetail into and feed from each other to provide a comprehensive programme of activities to address some of the barriers to the uptake of eCooking.
A visit in October 2024 enabled Dr Anna Clements, the MECS Lead Researcher for Tanzania, and me to engage with the relevant Ministries, getting valuable input and endorsement of the intended activities. The trip also enabled us to meet and start working closely with Charles Barnabas, our local Partnership Liaison Lead based in Tanzania. Charles enables us to engage locally and quickly to support the programme and wider work to develop eCooking in Tanzania.
The second visit in February 2025 was intended to bring together the now 16 contracted partners (who will be delivering the six work streams) into a workshop to highlight both the synergies across the programming and any missing pieces of work to assist the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania to accelerate the uptake of eCooking.
The focus of the morning session was to enable each partner to give a brief overview of their activities. This ranged from TANESCO’s internal awareness raising campaign and their on-bill financing; WFP and SEforALL’s schools programme which aims to transition 50 schools with school-feeding into eCooking; to standards and labelling which aim to provide a robust testing and labelling system to ensure customer confidence in these new appliances. It was clear that whilst most participants knew of the programme activities, hearing about them in this way showed the full breadth of the activities and the inter-connectedness of the work streams. The importance of raising consumer awareness across all the work streams became highly relevant and links and connections developed on the day will ensure that Fern Marketing, who are delivering the National eCooking Awareness Campaign, will encompass the various areas of activity into their messaging.
The role of training for fundis (technicians) highlighted the importance of links to the schools’ programmes and partners talked about the need to ensure that a network is close to these sites. The description of the FixChap app that enables trained fundis to be registered, available for maintenance and repairs, and easily linked to the customer, gave confidence that easy access to aftersales support would be a reality.
| Activity | Partner |
| Transition 50 schools to eCooking during 2025. | Sustainable Energy for All and World Food Program |
| Utility eCooking programme to raise awareness to staff and customers, and develop on-bill financing to increase affordability and accessibility. | Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (TANESCO) |
| Repair and Maintenance (Aggregator App and Curriculum Development) to ensure fundis are trained for the new appliances and accessible when repairs are required. | FixChap |
| National Awareness Raising Campaign to raise awareness of the opportunity of eCooking to 10% of the population. | Fern Marketing |
| Development of Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) and labelling to give customers confidence that their appliances are suitable and efficient. | Joseph Njuguna Contracting and Tanzania Bureau of Standards |
| Sustainable Supply Chains (B2B) will support established companies to expand their activities and supply B2B. | Smart Pika , UpEnergy, SESCOM and Jicho Chanya/Positive Cooker |
| Jiko Fanisi La Umeme Supply Chain partners will provide access to a range of eCooking appliances across the regions of Tanzania. | Africanetic Company Ltd, Bajeti, Calvary Nile, Gre-Eco, Mlandege Homestores, Nukta and Oak Workshop |
Representing the supply chain, there were four main distributors in attendance along with seven small businesses, many of which are startups, who aim to build on their business knowledge by selling a range of four new eCooking appliances (rice cookers, air fryers, induction hobs or EPCs). Many new business connections and alliances were established between these two organisation types during the event.
I was delighted with the attendance of so many of the partners and the increased awareness the workshop brought about the whole programme. More importantly, was the way that everyone actively contributed to the way the programme could be developed, and the session on what is missing and needed to further support eCooking scale in Tanzania, gave real insight into activities that may be needed moving forward. Issues such as tax reform, incentives from Government to private business and finance to encourage uptake of appliances were raised, amongst others. A strong supply network and good infrastructure were felt to be key to ensuring effective distribution of appliances to users. Clearly, there is more needed to develop the market and enabling environment and these insights were well received.
Our MC for the day was Charles Barnabas. He did a fabulous job (and at short notice, due to illness) of ensuring all voices were heard and that the ideas that were raised were noted.
The final word must go to one of our Jiko Fanisi la Umeme project partners who noted that all of the progress was interesting but what we now needed was to deliver on these promises! I fully agree and look forward to the next 12 months of activities and seeing where this programme moves Tanzania to, in terms of the adoption of eCooking.
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All featured images in this blog are copyright of MECS Programme, 2025.