Background:
Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa's Sahelian belt, faces severe environmental challenges. Erratic rainfall and increasing extreme weather events drive degradation and desertification, depleting timber resources. Unsustainable harvesting exacerbates this, especially impacting rural communities reliant on forest products for cooking.
Gender inequalities persist despite legal equality. Women bear the brunt of deforestation, as they are responsible for domestic tasks and must travel further for firewood, risking their safety. Burning wood also releases harmful gases, adding financial burdens for urban families.
Mali's energy production is deficient, with low access to modern services, especially in rural areas. Despite this, Mali has substantial solar energy potential. Solar cookers can reduce CO2 emissions, save energy, and ease women's workloads, providing a sustainable solution.
CTCN support:
CTCN's support aims to enhance the adaptive capacities of rural and urban populations in Mali, particularly focusing on women's effective participation, to bolster resilience against climate change. This support seeks to reduce reliance on biomass for cooking by promoting the development, production, and dissemination of energy-efficient, clean, and affordable cooking technologies.
Expected outcome:
The technical assistance aims to strengthen the adaptive capacities of rural and urban populations, with an emphasis on women's participation, to enhance their resilience to climate change. This will reduce dependence on biomass for cooking and facilitate the development, production, and transfer of energy-efficient, clean, and inexpensive cooking technologies. Specific objectives include:
- Enhancing the safety, health, and economic well-being of rural and urban women and their families by increasing access to affordable solar cookers, which will reduce demand for wood and charcoal, protecting and restoring local ecosystems.
- Conducting an assessment of culinary practices in Mali.
- Developing a feasibility study that examines the economic, cultural, social, gender, and environmental challenges and opportunities for expanding solar cooking access.
- Formulating recommendations to boost market opportunities for solar cooking in Mali.
- Implementing two pilot projects to evaluate culinary experiences and user preferences in rural and urban/suburban areas.
- Promoting better understanding and adoption of solar cooking in Mali.