Ghana eCookbook launched by MECS at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022, Accra

MECS, with local support from The Last Supper Project, has launched the publication Ghana eCookbook: Exploring Electric Cooking today in front of a live clean cooking sector audience at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022, Accra, hosted by the Clean Cooking Alliance and the Government of Ghana.

The latest edition in the MECS eCookbook series, eCookbooks measure the energy, time and cost savings of cooking traditional dishes using energy efficient electric appliances. They package and present complex findings around energy and cooking in a digestible and accessible way so households, utility companies and policy-makers can make better informed decisions around fuels and appliances for cooking.

The Ghana eCookbook aims to shed light on three particular research questions:

1) can popular Ghanaian foods be cooked using modern energy efficient devices?

2) On a dish by dish basis, how much electricity does it consume and how does it compare to primary cooking fuels in urban Ghana (charcoal and LPG)?

3) Is it convenient to use electricity for cooking and how does the taste compare?

Currently, only 1% of Ghanaians use electricity as their primary cooking fuel. Few people have an idea of how much it costs to cook typical Ghanaian foods. Our preliminary findings indicate that it can be 2-4 times cheaper to cook using electricity than LPG or charcoal. By exploring the relationship between energy use and cooking we hope this book can inform cooks on how best to take advantage of the opportunity to cook using electricity in Ghana. All the more since Ghana has a high rate of connectivity (87 percent), has entered a period of surplus capacity and has relatively stable provision of electricity in recent years.

In order to determine preliminary time, energy and cost implications of cooking using electricity in Ghana we conducted multiple controlled cooking tests. Abigail Sarpong, Jacob Fodio Todd and Steyn Hoogakker with his team of research assistants and participants in Accra documented and tested Ghanaian recipes for electric pressure cookers and airfryers, as well as on LPG and charcoal stoves, with energy measurements taken using the MECS controlled cooking test protocol (CCT).

Before l didn’t know you can use electricity to cook many things… And with my experience now, I can cook everything with electricity

Hajia