<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Consolas;
panose-1:2 11 6 9 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0mm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
p.MsoPlainText, li.MsoPlainText, div.MsoPlainText
{mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"Plain Text Char";
margin:0mm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:10.5pt;
font-family:Consolas;}
p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-priority:1;
margin-top:5.0pt;
margin-right:0mm;
margin-bottom:5.0pt;
margin-left:0mm;
mso-add-space:auto;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
p.MsoNoSpacingCxSpFirst, li.MsoNoSpacingCxSpFirst, div.MsoNoSpacingCxSpFirst
{mso-style-priority:1;
mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:5.0pt;
margin-right:0mm;
margin-bottom:0mm;
margin-left:0mm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
p.MsoNoSpacingCxSpMiddle, li.MsoNoSpacingCxSpMiddle, div.MsoNoSpacingCxSpMiddle
{mso-style-priority:1;
mso-style-type:export-only;
margin:0mm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
p.MsoNoSpacingCxSpLast, li.MsoNoSpacingCxSpLast, div.MsoNoSpacingCxSpLast
{mso-style-priority:1;
mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0mm;
margin-right:0mm;
margin-bottom:5.0pt;
margin-left:0mm;
mso-add-space:auto;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
span.PlainTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Plain Text Char";
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"Plain Text";
font-family:Consolas;}
span.EmailStyle20
{mso-style-type:personal-reply;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}
.MsoPapDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;}
@page WordSection1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Dear Paal<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I have been too overloaded to answer you email of last weekend and it is already 10 days later, but you mentioned something that is related to that post:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>“</span><span lang=EN-GB style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>What are the obstacles to carry out such a program to almost no cost?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I feel that to really get a broad acceptance of several useful technologies that should be part of basic science education from the age of about 10. Many children will not complete primary school so we need to get to them before they reach grade 5. In Swaziland, like many countries, primary education includes basic animal husbandry (knowing when a goat is pregnant etc etc).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>There are several technologies that have to do with clean(er) living including simple stoves, water filters, crop shelling and storage – it is a long list but not an impossible one at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>There is a place for very simple stoves. There is a place for more complex and more expensive stoves. We are not in a position to live other people’s lives for them so our role is to show what is possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The primary school syllabus is the right place to introduce these things. It is unfortunate that those who prepare them feel that the whole of humanity is about to get connected to a power supply like they are, or like they wish to be.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Cecil and I often found that the people most resistant to intermediate or appropriate technologies are high level politicians who do not want to be seen ‘bring backward things’ to ‘their people’. The same resistance is also common in academia. To be seen promoting simple things is to be seen ‘keeping people back’ even if the benefits are obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>One way we have dealt effectively with this is to always make sure we offer a range of technologies and see what people choose to make or buy or replicate. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>It would be unwise to underestimate people’s aspirations. We feel that simple things could save lives and make everyday living a more pleasurable experience. How many times have people refused to adopt obviously beneficial technologies or techniques, or for that matter, ideas! The world is a complicated place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The root problem is lack of education and the syllabus is where changes can be made. Travelling ‘barefoot engineers’ have been remarkably successful in some regions. Informal education classes have been very effective and spreading better health and farming. When did you hear about a cooking class? Very rare.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Spreading the knowledge of simple stoves can be expensive in the beginning. It frequently costs more to teach someone to make a stove than the stove is worth – even ten times more. When you leave things to themselves to develop, like the briquette production which seems to be flourishing, you get ‘design drift’. Because stoves are far more dimensionally demanding than a briquette and people do not have equipment or knowledge to test their small changes for themselves, experience shows that a good stove degenerates after several replications, one man to the next. This design drift can be countered with drawings, tools (forms) and publicity. There was a Canadian-funded poster campaign in Niger that showed how to make an improved stove with pictures only (people can’t read). It was a great idea. There are lots of ways to use common objects like coins and paper money to show dimensions of parts. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The development of a technology is about 5% of the cost of bringing it at scale to a population. This is well known. That is why organisations like GERES and GIZ and DGIS exist: big donor money to promote at scale.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>You will find very very few social scientists and marketing people in the stove community. In fact there are very few industrial designers either, even though they are the ones trained to turn inventions into acceptable products. Stove designers (most of the list members) are very occupied with their designs and functions, not commercial acceptable appearance and saleability. Stove designers think nothing of asking cooks to change their fuel preparation habits, their cooking times, their attention requirement, the effort to maintain or build it. Well, that is perhaps why there are so many failed stove roll-outs. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Marketing professionals can often look at a stove programme and see immediately where the problems in the supply chain will be, or the difficulty of selling a behaviour change. It is a very complicated business and we need many types of stoves, combustion and sizes – as many as there are food types. My wife is very miserable if she has no baking oven. It is her basic demand. As a result we have baked cakes in electric frying pans, metal boxes and gas ovens, electric ovens with mal-functioning controls. Werner Schultz in Namibia cooks by placing a stove on top of a cake tin, with the tin buried in the ground. His stove also makes hot water like the Jompy does, with a coiled copper pipe near the fire. It is cheap, small, portable and the one I saw had been used for 30 years. Imagine – all those features and it still has not caught on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>We have a big task ahead of us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Regards<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>