Nearly all public boarding secondary schools in Nigeria use wood for cooking. About 30 million households depend solely on wood as a source of fuel for their daily cooking. According to the WHO, 95,300 deaths occur in Nigeria annually as a result of smoke from cooking with firewood1.
After malaria and HIV/AIDS, this is Nigeria’s third highest killer of Nigeria loses approximately 3% of its forest annually; the use of firewood being one of the major causes. The growing population and the increasing cost of cleaner alternatives like kerosene, LPG and electricity only compound this trend. Even though the National Energy Policy seeks to substitute the use of wood with kerosene, cooking gas and electricity, this transition has been slow and in many cases is being reversed. mostly women and children.
Wood use in Nigeria is predominantly through traditional three-stone fires. These fires burn wood inefficiently as most of the heat is lost to the atmosphere. This is a waste of valuable resources both in terms of forest resources, as well as the high cost of buying fuelwood. Today, smoke from millions of cooking fires has become an important cause of greenhouse gases which cause global warming.
