Innovative mud stoves: Sakhile Ndebele’s fight against climate change in Zimbabwe

UNIKA KOMBORA & ERIC MORGEN MOYO*

The mud is her companion, inseparable as they navigate the landscape together, the dust swirling up in a dance of celebration. Far away in Harare, the sun-drenched city buzzes with life; and there stands the jewel of Harare, the Crowne Plaza, striving to stake its claim in the brilliance of the day.

Image: Supplied 

Hosting a high-level delegation meeting—just one of many this hotel has witnessed—Crowne Plaza serves as a backdrop for the citizens of its urbane surroundings, who are continually galvanizing, organizing, and empowering individuals like Sakhile Ndebele.

Sakhile is a 38-year-old single mother living in Bidi, the rural part of Matobo. She might never hear of the resolutions made in this meeting termed high level, but for the conveners of the meeting and the attendees, they hope she can at least interact with the resolutions. 

But over the past year, she has benefited from these interactions, gaining access to various opportunities, learning new things, and ultimately making a significant breakthrough.

Climate change, or the term of it, has been discussed in more spaces she’s had access to than she would remember, but living in region five, the driest region in Zimbabwe, punctuated by very low rainfall and extreme temperatures, conveners of such spaces didn’t need to tell her much about the effects of climate change.

Having grown up in Matobo, drought has been a certainty just as the sun setting in the west. The Southern Africa Drought Resilience Initiative’s (SADRI’s) report on drought resilience profile for Zimbabwe, indicates that among the drought prone areas in the country the south-western provinces of Matabeleland North and South show higher levels of drought risk, vulnerability and exposure.

In Matobo, crop and livestock losses have become too common the same way young people are lost to neighbouring South Africa as the emigrate in search of greener pastures. As a young businesswoman, Sakhile has had to watch helplessly in recent years the disappearance of their famous mopane worms popularly known as amacimbi in the local dialect. 

The mopane worms, also known as amacimbi, have not only provided a source of protein for her and her community, but have also served as a much-needed source of income when harvested and sold to people from other provinces across the country. The proceeds from the sale of amacimbi have enabled her together with some of her friends to not only avoid starving but to also send their children to school. 

However, due to reduced rainfall and more deforestation—because of firewood, which remains the leading source of fuel there—the precious amacimbi have found less places to inhabit, leading to their disappearance. And leading to some losing revenue sources. 

Civil society organisations recently held a Youth Symposium in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, exploring a plethora of issues including climate change. 

In the session on climate change, discussants spoke amongst other topics of a lack of available climate finance to fund adaptation strategies in rural areas, as well as a lack of resources to support capacity-building initiatives for youth and women-focused climate change initiatives. 

Also discussed was the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund not yet being felt in the most vulnerable communities across Zimbabwe, given that youth and women are the most impacted by climate change-induced losses and damages. A discussion on a just transition towards renewable energy and its impacts on rural communities also came under the spotlight.

In Matobo, Sakhile Ndebele seems to have at least answered one of the many questions related to addressing the energy challenges in her community. By creating Tsotso stoves, an invention made from mud, using tree twigs as a form of fuel instead of large blocks of woods, she might just reduce the high levels of deforestation in her area. 

Choosing to train a group of young people and fine-tuning her adopted invention, she has made her initiative both sustainable and profitable. She has also already begun receiving orders of the stoves from people outside Matobo, and she will continue to charge people interested in learning the craft of making them. 

Through this innovation, she doesn’t have to tell people to stop cutting trees anymore, but only needs to make them understand that there is money through sustainable forms of energy. The fact that the stoves emit no smoke while in use, is another icing to the cake for both her clients and the environment.

Sakhile’s story is one that highlights how addressing economic challenges together with environmental stewardship is key in addressing climate change impacts. For long, climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies focused on reducing certain ills by the community without addressing the economic causes that forced many to engage in environmentally unsustainable and destructive initiatives. 

This often led to a cycle of environmental degradation and poverty. For instance, teaching an artisanal miner the effects of their actions on the environment and urging them to stop without giving them an alternative to making a living, is a futile exercise. 

For the sustainability of climate change efforts, there is need for the merging of adaptation methods, particularly for communities with economic reward or benefits. 

It will also be pertinent that organisations such as the Global Platform, Zimbabwe Council of Churches, and Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development continue to create safe spaces for the dissemination of climate change information, from the experts to grassroots communities as they have been doing for other programs. 

Real transformation lies in the empowerment of all in a community. And to this end, we can draw important lessons from Sakhile's story. 

*Unika Kombora and Eric Morgen Moyo are enthusiasts regarding ways to tackle climate change, and wrote this article in their personal capacities.