Charlot Magayi founded Mukuru Clean Stoves to ensure that women in communities across Africa have access to cook stoves that are clean and safe. What started as a desire to help her own daughter has expanded into a business that improves the lives of hundreds of thousands of women across Kenya.

Excellent story, I'm glad she has found success and spreading success down the chain, especially with women.

As well as saving trees, reducing emissions and lung cancer, this will also help reduce other illnesses associated with open fire cooking like cataracts.

I once read that excessive aid to third world countries can prevent initiatives like this; the famous example given was that gifting mosquito nets prevents local net manufacturers from thriving, thus keeping the economy down.

This is fantastic. Cooking is mostly done by women in developing countries, and they often use stoves that create dangerous amounts or kinds of smoke. Women are disproportionately more likely to die from diseases brought on by inhaling this dangerous smoke/exhaust - and this is preventable! This woman is saving lives. Absolutely love to see news like this.

It always thrills me when a person of humble origins, like Charlot Magayi, sets their sights on fixing a problem and manages to create a solution that transforms the world.

She is one of those great minds who sees a widely accepted and mundane aspect of daily living (in this case, open fires inefficiently burning wood in everyone's home) and invents a simple fix.

And her fix is revolutionary on many levels. It is inexpensively made from recycled materials - a savings that is transferred to the customers. It burns cleanly and efficiently, reducing expenses and indoor pollution (which causes life ending diseases). It can be adapted to burn natural mosquito repellents which will further save lives.

Plus she is using local labor to both create and sell her stoves - and has a program where people can bring in their agricultural waste (transformed into fuel bricks) to trade for credit to purchase one of the stoves.

I hope she continues to rise and is given more power to benefit the women of Kenya. This world needs more Charlot Magayis.

What an inspiring and educational video. She's an incredible woman, solving one problem and moving on to another.

I am so glad to hear that something useful is finally being achieved by the earth shot prize.

This is amazing. Bless this incredible woman

Thanks for sharing! I love how many problems it's solving/reducing - the smoke problem, the inefficiency of the wood burning, and also finding an application for recycled materials.

This is great. On one hand. On the other, I am rather shocked that they don't have safe stoves already. I mean, the technology has existed for quite some time !

Does anyone know more about how exactly those new stoves work?

Is the principle similar to that of those rocket mass heaters? https://commonsensehome.com/rocket-mass-heaters/ (I mean, I don't imagine they need the heating part in warm climates, but the fuel efficiency part is very important regardless.)