New portfolio company in Zambia scaling up access to clean cooking solutions

A new agreement has been signed between the Modern Cooking Facility for Africa (MCFA) and a clean cooking company in Zambia producing, selling and renting clean cookstoves to support the scale-up of clean cooking solutions for households in peri-urban and urban areas of the country.

The agreement has been signed with Emerging Cooking Solutions Zambia Limited, a local Zambian company established in 2013 with a Swedish-registered mother company. The company also has subsidiaries in Malawi and Mozambique. The approx. EUR 2 million results-based financing to be provided from MCFA will mobilise additional co-financing, doubling the total support provided to EUR 4 million by the end of the project implementation in 2027.

Emerging Cooking Solutions will offer its customers micro-gasification stoves together with its own SupaMoto pellets, made from timber mill off-cuts from managed forestry plantations, under a subscription-based utility model. The pellets will be purchasable via mobile money and delivered to customers free of charge using mainly electric vehicles.

With the results-based financing provided from MCFA, the company aims to scale up its business activities and expand its operations from current focus areas in Lusaka and Ndola to include Solwezi, Mufulira, Chingola, Chililabombwe, Kitwe, Luanshya, Kapiri Mposhi and Kabwe. This will result in the implementation of over 28,600 new clean cooking services, mainly for low-income households currently using charcoal, which are expected to benefit up to some 143,000 Zambians in peri-urban and urban areas of the country.

“The yearly positive climate impact of our MCFA-financed project will be on par with the total carbon footprint of a Swedish town of about 20,000 inhabitants. The cost savings and health benefits to our customers in Zambia will be substantial. With the support from MCFA we will continue to work hard to realise our full potential as a clean cooking provider,” says Mattias Ohlson, CEO of Emerging Cooking Solutions.

The Emerging Cooking Solutions stoves are fitted with a fan, which is powered by a battery that can be charged either through a solar panel or USB charger. The company has developed its own GSM-based Stove Use Monitoring technology. The stoves are fitted with a SIM card that wirelessly sends non-personal usage data over a 2G GSM network, which helps troubleshoot any issues with the stove or its usage.

The MCFA partner GET.invest, a European programme that mobilises investment in renewable energy, is supporting Emerging Cooking Solutions with strategic advisory services, financial modelling as well as fundraising and transaction support.

“Emerging Cooking Solutions is an experienced and innovative provider of higher tier cooking solutions in Zambia, which will now be able to expand its business operations in the country with the MCFA financing,” comments Heli Sinkko, Programme Manager at Nefco.

The Modern Cooking Facility for Africa (MCFA) supports access to and scale-up of higher-tier clean cooking solutions. The first funding round (MCFA1) in spring 2022 received significant interest in all project countries. Emerging Cooking Solutions was selected via a competitive application process under the Zambian country programme. The selection process included a two-stage third-party evaluation of applications by independent experts and a detailed due diligence process carried out by Danish Energy Management A/S in consortium with LFS Advisory.

A second funding round (MCFA2) will open at the end of November for companies registered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe with total available funding of up to EUR 16 million.

For further information, please contact:

Heli Sinkko, Programme Manager, Modern Cooking Facility for Africa, Nefco
Heli.Sinkko@nefco.int, +358 10 6180 659

Per Löfberg, Co-founder, Emerging Cooking Solutions
per@emerging.se, +46 735 023 157

About Emerging Cooking Solutions

Emerging Cooking Solutions is offering clean cooking solutions and stoves specifically designed for both households and businesses. Besides its distribution of stoves and pellets, it has also worked closely with the company ixo to create an innovative carbon credit platform, using data from its Internet-connected stoves and corresponding fuel sales. This platform recently won the ‘Digital Innovation Challenge’ by the UN-CDF and Clean Cooking Alliance. It aims to democratise access to carbon finance and increase quality using digital-native solutions and high-quality data. As a first use case, the ixo-platform will be used in the implementation of the MCFA project. Read more on: www.emerging.se

Photo: A woman using a Supamoto cookstove in peri-urban area in Zambia – Emerging Cooking Solutions Zambia