InStove Factory Brings Jobs and Clean Cooking Technology to Nigeria
On June 28, three InStove personnel departed for Nigeria to set up our first factory and train Nigerian workers. By the end of July, the factory had completed production of over 120 stoves with eleven trainees, some of whom had been on the job only a week and a half. The workers are producing about ten finished stoves per day, matching the production rate of our factory in Oregon.
Our local production partner is The International Center for Energy, Environment, and Development (ICEED). The project is partly funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and is the culmination of three years’ work in Nigeria. ICEED has preorders from the Nigerian school system, where it will place the stoves in school meal programs in every state in the country. ICEED expects demand for stoves in the educational sector alone exceeds 10,000 units: over 20 times the amount produced by this initial production run.
The opening of this first “Stove-Factory-In-A-Box” is a great step forward and an opportunity to slow deforestation and improve lives in the country that gave InStove its start.
