
It’s Africa’s Quiet Killer. This Entrepreneur Says He Has a Low-Cost Fix - mattbierner
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/business/rwanda-charcoal-pellet-stoves-.html
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Gibbon1
I keep thinking what these people need is a microwave, rice cooker, and a
0.5kw solar installation.

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Broken_Hippo
That has severe hurdles everywhere. You'd be better off with a good hot plate
instead of the microwave.

A microwave is not a substitute for a stove. Have you had microwave meats?
Tried to brown vegetables in the microwave? These two things alone mean that
you have the initial problem of changing people's food. In addition, most
folks would need to buy new utensils and cooking vessels for that microwave
and hope there is a bakery nearby that they could afford to buy bread from.

There is also an education cost that is much, much greater than moving from a
fire/charcoal to the stove. Your cooking methods are very similar when moving
to the stove and most of the education lies in operating your new device.
Traditional cooking doesn't transfer well to the microwave, so someone is
going to have to teach folks.

I much prefer a more traditional stove setup with a solar installation, even
if it is a hot plate or something similar. But I realize that having a pellet
stove is going to spread more quickly simply because of costs, portability,
ease of distribution, and lack of failure due to weather.

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Gibbon1
> Have you had microwave meats?

For a lot of poor Africans this isn't a problem.

