Making cooking champions: Perceptions of local actors on private sector development in Uganda

Abstract

Most households in Uganda depend on traditional use of wood fuels associated with huge environmental and health issues. Even with the future development of a sustainable national grid, small-scale solutions like efficient biomass stoves, biochar, and biogas installations will remain important. Despite the apparent benefits from clean cooking resulting from “dissemination” programs since the 1980's, many developing country households have been slow to adopt them. Hence, questions arise concerning commercially viable business development. This study takes a qualitative approach and actors-based perspective from the major players at the supply-side of the clean cooking on biomass market sector. A field research in Kampala (Uganda) explored the success factors according to local private actors' perceptions. The confrontation between these perceptions and a literature-based success-factor framework revealed original insights in terms of enabling conditions to strengthen the supply-side, related to the demand-side and the clean cooking market. First, becoming a ‘clean cooking champion’ is still highly dependent on the role of supportive and intervening development programs, especially in terms of financing, capacity-building, and awareness-raising. Second, up to now, carbon finance is an additional incentive rather than a determining factor for business activities in the clean cooking sector. Third, while some policies and targets exist, private sector respondents lament the lack of a level playing field and the competition of the informal cooking sector. Thus, this research provides an empirical basis for a possible approach to leverage private sector experience and expertise to improve access to clean cooking on biomass in Uganda.