Experiences of Electric Pressure Cookers in East Africa?

Abstract

This paper seeks to highlight the emerging opportunity for manufacturers to enter the largely untapped market for efficient electric cooking appliances such as the Electric Pressure Cooker (EPC) in East and Southern Africa. The paper is an output of the UK Aid programme Modern Energy Cooking Services, a 5 year programme of work (2018–2023) led by Loughborough University. In East Africa, electricity networks are growing stronger and broader, opening up electric cooking to an almost entirely untapped market particularly in urban areas that are still dominated by charcoal. In each country, approximately ten million people pay for polluting cooking fuels, yet they have a grid connection that is not used for cooking. Historically this has been due to the pricing and unreliability of the grids. As Grids get stronger and appliances more efficient the affordability and convenience of electric cooking is becoming more realistic. In Southern Africa, electric cooking has been and is more popular, however inefficient appliances are placing a heavy strain on national utilities, many of whom are now looking to manage demand more sustainably. Again, the advent of energy efficient appliances changes the dynamic for the household.

Cooking is deeply cultural and any new energy efficient cooking devices must be compatible with local foods and cooking practices. This paper presents insights from cooking diaries, focus groups and ‘kitchen laboratory’ experiments carried out in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The results show that EPCs are not only acceptable, but highly desirable. Over 90% of the menu can be cooked in an EPC and certain foods require just one fifth of the energy of a hotplate. In real homes, participants with EPCs, rice cookers and hotplates chose the efficient appliances for approximately half their menu and for these dishes, they used roughly half the energy of the hotplate. Without training and with limited experience of the new devices, the trial participants in Kenya who cooked solely on electricity had a median daily consumption of 1.4 kWh/household/day, and the cooking of 50% of the menu on an EPC utilised 0.47 kWh/household/day of that total. Given that EPCs could have cooked 90% of the desired menu, with appropriate training and broader experience, the median could have been reduced to less than 1 kwh/day/household. This research feeds into a new UK Aid programme, Modern Energy Cooking Services and concludes with recommended design modifications that could enable users to do more cooking with EPCs and open up sizeable new market segments including strengthening weak-grid and off-grid.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Typical Kenyan Foods

‘Heavy’ foods like beans, meat stew or makande/githeri generally require boiling for 60 min or more. They are easy to cook on an EPC, which can offer significant energy and time savings over electric hotplates, or a rice cooker with moderate energy savings.

• Githeri/mokimo—beans and maize stew, usually wet fried/mashed potatoes with maize/beans/peas/pumpkin leaves. Many people will pre-cook (boil) githeri in bulk and wet fry portions throughout the week.

• Beans/peas/kamande/ndengu—beans/peas/lentils/green grams, usually stewed. Typically dried, so require rehydrating as well as cooking—some people soak before cooking, others just cook for longer. Many people will pre-cook (boil) in bulk and wet fry portions throughout the week.

• Chicken, meat—Usually wet fry (stew) or dry fry. Many people will pre-cook (boil) meat in bulk and wet fry portions throughout the week.

• Matumbo—Tripe, usually wet fried

‘Staple’ foods and water that require boiling for 15 min or more can also be cooked on an EPC, with moderate energy and time savings or rice cooker with moderate energy savings.

• Heating water—for tea/coffee, bathing, drinking etc.

• Pasta/noodles—Boiled and then often wet fried.

• Porridge—Requires regular stirring, but perhaps not in the electric pressure cooker. Need to do more experimentation on this.

• Potatoes/pumpkin/nduma/muhogo—Nduma = arrow roots, muhogo = cassava. Usually boiled, sometimes wet fried. Will need to check process to differentiate boiled and stewed.

• Matoke—Bananas. Usually wet fried, sometimes boiled. Will need to check process to differentiate boiled and stewed.

• Rice—Just boiled.

• Pilau—A combination of meat stew and rice. May use meat stew/stock pre-cooked on a previous occasion, or may cook the meat especially for this dish. May involve some frying of onions too. Sometimes potato is even thrown in!

• Ugali—Kenyans usually bring water to the boil, turn down the heat, add maize flour, stir, repeating a few times, then leaving to simmer until the mixture has reached the desired consistency.

‘Quick fry’ foods can also be cooked on an EPC or rice cooker, but some households may be reluctant to try and/or there are limited energy savings.

• Eggs—Could be boiled, fried or omelette. If omelette, can often be combined with potatoes (chips mayai), which may need deep frying first.

• Fish—Typically wet or dry fried whole or in fillets.

• Leafy veg—Sukuma wiki, spinach, etc. Typically dry fried, sometimes with onions.

• Sausages—Typically shallow fried.

‘Long fry and deep fry’ foods are very difficult to cook on an EPC or rice cooker, as they require precise temperature control.

• Pancakes/Chapati—Shallow fried one by one in a shallow pan, as they must be flipped and swapped over many times. Requires low heat evenly distributed throughout the pan.

• Chips—Deep fried. If oil too hot, they burn, if too cold, they go soggy.

• Mandazi—Donuts. As above (Table 4).

Table 4 Number of each dish cooked on inefficient (hotplate) and efficient (rice cooker and EPC) appliances during the Kenya cooking diaries^a

Appendix 2: Regional Colour Coding and Two-Letter Country Codes

See Table 5.

Table 5 Regional colour coding and two-letter country codes used throughout this report