Learnings from the road: Do people in Tanzania think they can afford the upfront cost of eCooking?

By Charles Barnabas (Prime Expertise Ltd.) and Anna Clements (Gamos Ltd.).

In today’s cooking energy transition landscape, it is well known that the affordability of a cooking solution, both actual and perceived, is a key influence on whether a modern cooking solution reaches people’s homes. In this blog, we take a look at the perceived affordability of the upfront cost of eCooking appliances gathered from the Tanzanian public during some recent roadshows and consider what this means for eCooking adoption.  

As part of our Tanzania eCooking Scale and Support Programme funded by UK International Development, an eCooking Awareness Campaign called Pika Smart aims to increase public knowledge that eCooking is feasible and affordable. Fern Marketing conducted 51 full-day roadshow demonstrations across six regions, alongside airing the Pika Smart message on communication channels like TV, radio and billboards. In these roadshows, main stops were strategically selected in high-traffic areas such as market junctions and Mtaa (town) centres with suppliers of eCooking appliances – many of whom are also partners in the MECS programme – engaged to demonstrate eCooking to local communities. The roadshows were a great opportunity to ask the public questions about eCooking, and Fern took the opportunity to include price perceptions and perceived challenges to adoption in those surveys.

Participants were asked:

• ‘When you see this appliance and hear its price, what’s your first reaction?

Respondents could select from four choices: ‘Reasonable’, ‘Somewhat expensive’, ‘Expensive’, or that they were ‘Not sure’. Their answers have been averaged across the regions and are presented in Figure 1, where the darker colours show the more popular answer in that region.

The results show that the perception of the price of an eCooking appliance varies significantly across regions. In Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Tanga, the majority of those asked found prices to be reasonable, whereas in the other three regions, Arusha, Dodoma and Kilimanjaro, the majority thought the appliances are expensive. Arusha is the region with the most people who consider prices expensive, whereas Tanga has the highest proportion of those who find the prices reasonable. Also notable is how Kilimanjaro had the most people who were not sure, whereas respondents in other regions were much surer of their opinion.

Respondents were asked about their perception of the price, rather than their willingness to pay, and we cannot assume that all those who find the prices reasonable are also able to afford them. However, there is likely to be some correlation between price perception and ability and willingness to pay, and we wish we had had more time and resources to dig into that. However, if we assume that those who find the price reasonable are more likely to be able to afford paying for it (as a thought experiment), data such as this can be helpful to those designing programmes to accelerate eCooking adoption. We could infer from it which regions have a greater need for financial assistance. In Arusha, Dodoma, and Kilimanjaro, there are more people who would benefit from either subsidisation or a payment mechanism to spread the financial burden of the appliance – such as on bill financing (recently launched by TANESCO), or Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) schemes. In Dar es Salaam and Tanga, and to some extent Mwanza, companies could expect to make more direct cash sales.

In any case, for us, we are happy to see that, overall 44.2% of respondents (across all regions) found the prices of the appliances to be reasonable. During the interviews with the public, Fern found that they were attracted to saving time, the small amount of electricity required for their favourite dishes, and how the air fryer was able to fry with very little cooking oil, among other responses. It’s great to see from these roadshows that these members Tanzanian public value what eCooking appliances can do for them, despite them being costly to acquire.

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Featured image, top, credit: Fern Marketing.

AI (ChatGPT) was used to draw the chart; no AI was used for the blog text.