Powering Equality: How Electric Cooking is Transforming Women, Families and Communities in Tanzania

Seven years of eCooking research, three decades of community trust.

By TaTEDO-SESO.

At five o’clock most mornings in rural Hai District, Kilimanjaro, a woman is already awake, walking toward the tree line in search of cooking fuel, labour that is unpaid, unseen, and until recently unquestioned.

For generations, this was simply what it meant to be a woman in a Tanzanian household. Then, in a small but growing number of kitchens, an Electric Pressure Cooker (EPC) arrived, and something changed.

Over seven years, TaTEDO-Sustainable Energy Services Organization (TaTEDO-SESO) has built one of the most detailed evidence bases on gender and electric cooking on the continent. Five major studies point to one conclusion: clean cooking is not merely a technical fix for indoor air pollution, it is one of the most powerful, underused levers for advancing gender equality in Tanzania.

Why This Matters

Tanzania’s electricity access has risen from 14% of households in 2011 to 71% today, with the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project’s 2,115 MW now helping the grid reach all 12,318 mainland villages. Yet only about 2% of households cook with electricity — the gap between the power line outside and the pot on the stove is enormous, and above all a gender gap.

Tanzanian women spend up to fourteen hours a day on unpaid household labour nearly three times as much as men and much of it tied to cooking. This burden has driven TaTEDO-SESO’s research journey.

Seven Years of Learning

Between 2019 and 2026, TaTEDO-SESO partnered with Loughborough University, Gamos, MECS, the EU, UNCDF and UKRI’s Ayrton Challenge Programme on one of Africa’s most sustained gender and clean cooking research programmes. Two studies stand out.

• eCook and Gender in Tanzania (2019):  one of the first gendered analyses of battery-supported electric cooking in Tanzania, combining focus groups with cooking diaries from twenty households.

• Cooking Diaries of Dodoma and Kilimanjaro (2022): EPCs were placed in 24 households under the FCDO-funded MECS programme and tracked for three weeks, yielding concrete evidence of time savings and behaviour change.

The latest work broadened the lens, and the 2026 JustGESI study’s literature review, along with 32 key informant interviews across five regions, became Tanzania’s most comprehensive gender and clean cooking study yet.

Four Life-Changing Discoveries

Time, Returned

Across every study, one finding repeats: electric cooking gives women back their time. In Dodoma and Kilimanjaro, women reported over three hours less per day cooking after receiving EPCs, and firewood collection fell from fourteen hours a week to three — the difference between attending an evening class and missing it, between starting a small business and not having time to run one.

“The EPC freed participants from watching the pot, to attend to other tasks. Several said they would never go back to a wood stove.”
(Field evidence, Hai District, Kilimanjaro, 2022)

Time Becomes Income

As women gained time, seven in Dodoma and Kilimanjaro independently became EPC retailers — micro-enterprises with no formal intervention behind them. A network-based, Avon-style model, a trusted neighbour demonstrating an appliance at home, proved more persuasive than any billboard: one two-day training generated 40 direct enquiries. The remaining barrier is not appetite but capital, limited access to financing; i.e., on-bill financing or micro-credit.

Fear Gives Way to Experience

Two misconceptions recur everywhere — that EPCs are dangerous and too expensive — and both dissolve with direct experience. Women in Dodoma who had banned exploding stove-top pressure cookers embraced EPCs once they saw the appliance could not open under pressure or overheat unsafely.

Some women in Dodoma spent over TZS 60,000 a month on charcoal; EPC users halved that, often more. The belief that electricity is too costly can be dismantled but only through trusted, community-level demonstration.
(Cooking Diary, Dodoma 2022)

Weak standards, limited quality control and unreliable power all chip away at consumer confidence — a reminder that market development and policy reform must advance together.

Perhaps the most quietly radical finding is electric cooking’s potential to gently rebalance domestic labour. Men are not opposed to cooking in principle; they are deterred by the skill, mess and social weight of tending a fire. A button-press appliance removes most deterrents in Ubungo, several husbands now prepare tea or share cooking duties.

EPCs were found to have the potential to redefine men’s role as sole economic provider, as women’s freed-up time translated into income and men began to share more domestic responsibilities.
(JustGESI Final Report, 2026)

This is not an overnight transformation, but the pattern is consistent: the technology creates conditions for change that did not exist before.

Voices from the Field

In Their Own Words
“Before the EPC, I almost every afternoon went to collect firewood. Now that time goes to my vegetable stall.”
Woman participant, Dodoma cooking diaries study

“Once people saw it cook a dish they knew, the questions changed from ‘is it safe?’ to ‘where can I buy one?‘”
Community-based EPC sales agent, Kilimanjaro

Why Policy Matters

Tanzania has a strong policy architecture for clean cooking, though JustGESI 2026 is candid about the gap between policy and lived reality.

What Has Improved

• The National Clean Cooking Strategy (NCCS) 2024–2034 targets 80% clean cooking adoption, backed by a US$12.9 billion National Energy Compact, TANESCO’s on-bill financing pilot and the “Pika Smart” campaign.
• EWURA has integrated Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) principles into its oversight, reflecting years of TaTEDO-SESO advocacy.

What Still Holds Women Back

• The National Clean Cooking Fund, due to become operational by June 2025, remains non-functional, and appliance standards are still under development.
• GESI data remain fragmented; rural women, tenants, and people with disabilities are largely invisible in the monitoring activities.

What Should Happen Next

• Expand affordable, inclusive financing for women-headed households; enforce appliance standards and after-sales service beyond Dar es Salaam.
• Improve electricity reliability, move GESI from policy language to mandatory monitoring, and scale community-led demonstration with women as primary agents.

From Research to Market

TaTEDO-SESO’s contribution lies in the directness of the line from evidence to action. Through social enterprises i.e, SESCOM, it is both a research organisation and a market actor in EPCs, generating evidence, shaping policy, and bringing the appliance to market across Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Moshi and Arusha. The finding that purchasing decisions are joint, not male-controlled, shapes its marketing; the finding that women advocates emerge organically drives recruitment of female sales agents. Its mini-grid villages serve a dual-purpose commercial opportunity and gender-equity strategy.

Looking ahead

Tanzania stands at a genuine turning point. Policy architecture is in place, electricity infrastructure is expanding, and awareness is growing through campaigns like “Pika Smart” and online cooking communities. What is missing is the bridge: affordable financing, reliable electricity, enforced standards, and sustained community-level demonstration.

Five Lessons from Seven Years of Research

● Clean cooking gives women back hours of their day, every day.
● Clean cooking protects women’s and children’s health.
● Women turn freed-up time into income, often without being asked to.
● Men begin to share the cooking once the barriers to entry fall away.
● Affordable financing remains the single missing link between proven demand and national scale.

The Last Word

Every electric pressure cooker placed in a Tanzanian kitchen is an investment in women’s health, children’s education and household prosperity. The shift from firewood to electricity is not merely an energy transition, but one toward dignity, opportunity and equality.

The firewood era in Tanzania will not end in a single programme cycle, but it is ending, after seven years of evidence. The message is unmistakable: when women cook with clean energy, entire communities thrive.

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AI disclaimer: AI was used for grammar and spell checking of the text.

Featured image, top, credit: TaTEDO-SESO.