Toyola's mission is to profitably and sustainably serve Ghana's urban poor and low income rural households with energy efficient biomass stoves, which reduce fuel consumption by up to 50%, indoor air pollution and green house gases, thereby not only saving poor households money, but also improving their health and the environment in which they live. The company also supplies solar lanterns and small solar home systems to off grid communities thereby reducing their dependence on polluting and expensive kerosene lanterns.
Contact Information
Our Focus
Toyola significantly improves access of these unserved households to energy efficient cookstoves by operating a mobile stove delivery model that brings the products to the doorsteps of consumers in their villages and offers them credit so that they pay in convenient installments over time from savings they make from using these improved technologies. Toyola has sold over 100,000 stoves in the last 4 years through this strategy.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Toyola's marketing model is hinged on improving access of unserved communities to modern energy services by taking the products to them. The process starts with education about the dangers of current practices and a discussion of available alternatives. A readiness to allow the customers to "test drive" the technology by leaving the product on sale or return basis helps to reduce initial objections and hesitations and promotes acceptance.
Our homegrown direct delivery model, using mobile shops to sell stoves and solar lanterns to villagers in their communities and offering them credit and barter financing, has resulted in the sales of over 100,000 stoves and 6,000 solar energy products (lanterns and small home systems) in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Togo Republic in the last 4 years. Satisfied users are eventually appointed as sales agents in their communities and they earn commissions on sales made.
We have introduced specialization and division of labour to significantly improve the productivity per person of the locally produced Toyola cookstoves from 5 to 30 per day/artisan. However we are still interested in how we can improve this to 100/artisan/day using simple tools.
Toyola Cookstoves is already a carbon registered project and is subjected to both initial and ongoing monitoring for efficiency and indoor air pollution monitoring. We continue to be interested in indoor air pollution monitoring in a variety of settings for both our stoves and solar products.
Relevant Publications or Studies
Toyola has not published anything itself but has been profiled in Newsweek and quoted in the Economist as per the links below.
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/12/14/turning-carbon-into-cash.html
www.economist.com/node/17093623
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We have experience in 100% local production and successful marketing of cookstoves, perhaps more than any single company in Africa. Ours is one of the very few cookstoves project ever registered for carbon finance. We can share our expertise in stove dissemination and experience with the Partnership.
