Background: An evaluation was conducted of a three-year intervention focused on violence against women and girls (VAWG) and implemented in the conflict-affected north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country with high rates of VAWG. The intervention addressed VAWG, and especially sexual violence, by specifically engaging with communities of faith and their leaders. Methods: Two community surveys were conducted, one before and one after the intervention, in three health areas in Ituri Province in the DRC. At both baseline and endline, data was collected from male and female members of randomly selected households in 15 villages (five per health area) in which the intervention was being implemented. At baseline the sample comprised 751 respondents (387 women, 364 men) and at endline 1198 respondents (601 women, 597 men). Questionnaires were interviewer-administered, with sensitive questions related to experience or perpetration of violence self-completed by participants. Results: The study showed significantly more equitable gender attitudes and less tolerance for IPV at endline. Positive attitude change was not limited to those actively engaged within faith communities, with a positive shift across the entire community in terms of gender attitudes, rape myths and rape stigma scores, regardless of level of faith engagement. There was a significant decline in all aspects of IPV in the communities who experienced the intervention. While the experience and perpetration of IPV reported at endline did not track with exposure to the intervention, it is plausible that in a context where social norm change was sought, the impact of the intervention on those exposed could have had an impact on the behaviour of the unexposed. Conclusion: This intervention was premised on the assumption that faith leaders and faith communities are a key entry point into an entire community, able to influence an entire community. Research has affirmed this assumption and engaging with faith leaders and faith communities can thus be a strategic intervention strategy. While we are confident of the link between the social norms change and faith engagement and project exposure, the link between IPV reduction and faith engagement and project exposure needs more research.

Globally, 2.8 billion people still cook with biomass, resulting in health, environmental, and social challenges; electric cooking is a key option for a transition to modern energy cooking services. However, electric cooking is assumed to be too expensive, grids can be unreliable and the connection capacity of mini-grids and solar home systems is widely assumed to be insufficient. Developments in higher performance and lower cost batteries and solar photovoltaics can help, but they raise questions of affordability and environmental impacts. The range of issues is wide, and existing studies do not capture them coherently. A new suite of models is outlined that represents the technical, economic, human, and environmental benefits and impacts of delivering electric cooking services, with a life-cycle perspective. This paper represents the first time this diverse range of approaches has been brought together. The paper illustrates their use through combined application to case studies for transitions of households from traditional fuels to electric cooking: for urban grid-connected households in Zambia; for mini-grid connected households in Tanzania; and for off-grid households in Kenya. The results show that electric cooking can be cost-effective, and they demonstrate overall reductions in human and ecological impacts but point out potential impact ‘hotspots’. The network analysis shows that electric cooking can be accommodated to a significant extent on existing grids, due partly to diversity effects in the nature and timing of cooking practices.

“Are electric cooking appliances viable clean cooking solutions for mini-grids?” To help answer this question, the Access to Energy Institute (A2EI) set up a pilot project in six different mini-grid locations around Lake Victoria in Tanzania and gave 100 households an electric pressure cooker (EPC) to use in their homes. Each EPC was connected to a smart meter to collect data on how the EPCs were used. The paper presents findings from a study designed around the A2EI pilot project that aims to provide an understanding of cooking practices, the adoption of electric cooking over time, and to assess the potential for electric cooking to substitute traditional cooking fuels. Through collaboration with the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) program, Nexleaf Analytics, and PowerGen, the pilot has generated data on electrical energy consumption from 92 households in six remote areas as well as a comprehensive range of other datasets gathered from 28 households in two of the locations. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of this data. It starts with an analysis of cooking practices in these communities—dishes cooked, utensils used for cooking, and choice of fuels. It goes on to examine fuel stacking behavior, and finally, it examines how people have integrated EPCs into their cooking practices before the highlighting key impacts associated with using EPCs. The answer to the original research question will be useful for different stakeholders such as utility companies, mini-grid operators, electric cooking appliance manufacturers, the clean cooking sector, and international organizations.

Transitioning to clean cooking fuels is not only part of achieving SDG7 but also makes a significant contribution to mitigating climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Research projects and pilots across a number of countries in Africa and South Asia have been exploring the suitability and energy performance of different cooking appliances and fuels. The paper presents the first statistical analysis across these multiple datasets to determine the range of energy required to cook dishes using different technologies and fuels. The paper draws out distinctions between African and Asian dishes, notably the impact of energy-intensive dishes prepared mostly in Africa. The paper demonstrates that the standard efficiency-based approaches to comparing the performance of stoves are not appropriate to modern electric cooking devices, so a novel alternative approach based on specific energy consumption and termed energy ratios is developed. Charcoal stoves are shown to use 15 times as much energy as electric pressure cookers (EPCs) to cook African dishes, and a detailed review of how the EPC works explains why this should be. Energy ratios provide a basis for estimating carbon emission reductions associated with transitioning to modern cooking fuels and also for estimating household cooking costs. Fuel and electricity prices from studies show that the cost of cooking with an EPC can be only 20% of the cost of cooking with charcoal, which highlights the potential for modern, energy-efficient electric cooking devices to defy the conventional wisdom of the energy ladder.

Strategies for meeting Sustainable Development Goal 7 of providing access to electricity for all recognize the important role that off-grid solutions will need to play. Mini-grids will from part of this response, yet little data exists on household demand from these customers. Predicting demand accurately is a crucial part of planning financially viable mini-grid systems, so it is important to understand demand as fully as possible. This paper draws on metered data from two solar PV diesel hybrid mini-grid sites in Tanzania. It presents an analysis of load profiles from the different sites and categorizes households by demand characteristics. The paper then combines load profile data with household demographic and electrical asset ownership data to explore factors behind distinct load profile patterns of use. It concludes that load profiles are determined by a complex mix of appliance ownership, occupancy, and socio-economic status.