Chad

Last edited: 4 August 2019

Les femmes réfugiées du Darfour cuisinent solaire

VIdeo shows hundreds of CooKits in use at the Touloum Refugee Camp in Chad.

The Solar Cooker Project improves lives of Darfur refugees - More than 50,000 people in four Darfur refugee camps in Eastern Chad are using locally made solar CooKits designed by Solar Cookers International. The project is run by Tchad Solaire and by the British NGO CORD. Funding has been provided by Jewish World Watch and the Kozon Foundation. The project has improved the safety and survival of the women in the refugee camps. Previously, they were faced with dangerous and arduous trips outside the camps to collect scarce firewood. Two of the most extensive projects are at the Touloum Refugee Camp and the Iridimi Refugee Camp.

See other Most significant solar cooking projects worldwide.

Events

International conferences

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

NEW: 2-13 December, 2019 (Madrid, Spain): COP25 - The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is hosting the twenty-fifth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP25) has been scheduled to take place in Feria de Madrid in Madrid, Spain from 2-13 December, 2019. More information...

22-24 January 2020 (Faro, Portugal): CONSOLFOOD2020 - To be held at the Institute of Engineering, Universidade do Algarve, Campus da Penha. The conference will focus on solar thermal food processing. The deadline for receipt of abstracts was 15 June 2019. More information...

See also: Global Calendar of Events and past events in Chad

News

Pietro Rusconi teaches in Chad, 11-13-17 copy — Father Pietro Rusconi demonstrates a parabolic solar cooker in Chad. *Photo credit: Marco Roncalli*

November 2017: Jesuit inventor frees women from the bondage of fire - Through solar kitchens and "foyer améliorés", in Chad the father Pietro Rusconi values a renewable energy at zero cost and prevents women and mothers "break their backs in the Savannah to collect firewood and shrubs" or "buy expensive coal or oil". Read more... - (English version)

Solar Cooking in the Sahel map, 1-19-15 — Solar Cooking in the Sahel - *NOWCAST*

January 2015: Scholarly paper documents the available sunshine in the Sahel region of Africa - Authors, Beth Newton, Sophie Cowie, Derk Rijks, Jamie Banks, Helen Brindley, and John h. Marsham have published a well-documented analysis of the potential sunshine available for solar cooking in the Sahel region, particularly in northern Chad where a number of Sudanese refugee camps are located. TchadSolaire has been training both refugees and the indigenous population to solar cook in the region since 2005. Even along river population centers where clouds tend to form, solar cooking is possible for over 330 days a year. Read more: Solar Cooking in the Sahel - NOWCAST

PICT2221 — Women prepare a farewell dinner for the international team that had been evaluating their solar cooker project.

November 2013: Only solar cooking makes something like this possible - In 2009 several hundred women from Darfur refugee camps gathered together, each carrying a pot of raw food and a folded 12" x 12" cardboard and aluminum foil CooKit. They were preparing a farewell dinner for an international team that had been evaluating their solar cooker project. The women opened their CooKits and left their pots of food to cook unattended for 90 minutes while they sat in the shade. The result was a banquet for hundreds of people. If each of these women had been required to haul a fuel-efficient stove and a bundle of wood to this location along with her pot of food, she would have had to stay out in the sun, along with the other women, to tend her fire through the cooking process. Imagine hundreds of fires burning in the desert sun to cook what the ladies in this photo cooked with no fuel and no fire at all.

Touloum refugee camp 1 — A mother with her child watch over the solar panel cookers at the Touloum Refugee Camp.

May 2013: Solar cookers preparing food for 30,000 people daily at the refugee camps in Chad - Derk Rijks, a volunteer with the KoZon Foundation, recently responded to Jewish World Watch with this note of appreciation. "Last week I was at the Touloum Refugee Camp. The chief of the workshop, Fatimé, told me there were new arrivals. We walked over to the last of the dunes and there was one woman who had just walked in with four kids, sitting in the sand. Her village was bombed one week ago, and she had fled to escape the Janjaweed, walking for seven nights. Fatimé looked at me, I nodded " yes", and in the next few hours she had her cooker and started her solar cooker training, even before she had a shelter. No words needed, no paper needed. That is the way your contribution works." He also explains, in the six camps where they work in Chad, and in the villages of the population around the camps, about 29,000 families now do solar cooking, and about 130,000 people are eating solar cooked meals. In this part of the world solar cooking works about 300 days a year. From the empty bags of the food shipped in by the World Food Programme, and the snippets of aluminum foil and cardboard left over from the manufacture of the cookers, the refugees make "thermos baskets" to keep the food, cooked between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., warm until the evening meal at 5 p.m. or 8 p.m. They do not have to search for wood so much any more and there are far fewer conflicts for that reason. As one of the elected representatives of the women refugees said: "Solar cooking brings us justice and peace".

See older news...

History

Main article: History of solar cooking

Archived articles

Climate and culture

January 2015: Scholarly paper documents the available sunshine in the Sahel region of Africa - Authors, Beth Newton, Sophie Cowie, Derk Rijks, Jamie Banks, Helen Brindley, and John h. Marsham have published a well-documented analysis of the potential sunshine available for solar cooking in the Sahel region, particularly in northern Chad where a number of Sudanese refugee camps are located. TchadSolaire has been training both refugees and the indigenous population to solar cook in the region since 2005. Even along river population centers where clouds tend to form, solar cooking is possible for over 330 days a year. Read more: Solar Cooking in the Sahel - NOWCAST

See also

Resources

Possible funders

Construction plans in Arabic

CooKit
CooKit variation (made from smaller pieces of cardboard)
Minimum Box Cooker
Solar Water Pasteurizer

Project Evaluations

September 2014: Solar Cooking in the Sahel Region of Northern Africa - NOWCAST

November 2009: TchadSolaire Project Evaluation, Touloum Refugee Camp, Chad - Final Report - Evaluation of Cookit distribution in the Touloum Refugee Camp in Chad by TchadSolaire with notes about successful program elements and recommendations for technological improvements.

October 2007: Solar Cooker Project Iridimi, Refugee Camp, Chad - Final Evaluation - Observations from a five day evaluation of solar cooker use in the Iridimi Refugee Camp. Evaluation based on interviews with 121 refugees and includes recommendations for improving solar cooker use in the camp.