Africa-Press – Namibia. AN engineer in training at TransNamib has designed an outdoors stove for those living in informal settlements or who have no access to electricity.
Edward Sheefeni (35), who hails from Omundjalala village in the Anamulenge constituency in the Omusati region, invented the stove in December last year.
“I thought of this stove in November, then designed it around the same time. I did the fabrication in December 2021 and lit it up on 21 January this year,” he says.
Sheefeni says as a child, he was always fixing things around the house.
Coming from a less privileged background has taught him to do more with less, he says.
He says spending time at Goreangab informal settlement in Windhoek, where most people use firewood and gas for cooking, gave rise to the stove.
“I thought for better energy conservation I should build a stove which retains heat for a long time and requires less wood for cooking, smoking or baking,” Sheefeni says.
He says he used two 210-litre tanks to make the stove, which improves holding and cooking capacity.
The stove is easy to assemble and affordable.
“This stove has removable shelves in case you have something large to cook, smoke or bake. It is constructed with a venting system which allows for the release of any excess heat or smoke. It has two compartments which can close in case of wind or rain,” Sheefeni says.
The outdoor stove is not up for sale yet, since it is still in its trial phase.
Sheefeni is working on a second model, which he says would be on sale and is expected to be ready in the middle of the year.
“The next model would still address the informal settlements’ needs, but would also align with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 and universal climate-change initiatives.
“It would make use of renewable energy for cooking. Also, it would be much smaller to fit inside a house and be mobile,” he says.
Before pursuing engineering, Sheefeni says he thought of building a self-running electricity-generation power plant.
“Unfortunately experts in the field advised me it couldn’t work because there are ‘energy losses’ in the system, according to engineering principles I didn’t understand then,” he says.
This has led Sheefeni to study engineering with the hope of perfecting the power station design one day.
Sheefeni has spent many years at institutions such as the Namibian Marine and Fisheries Institute, the Okakarara Vocational Training Centre, the Nanjing University of Aeronautics in China, and has obtained a master’s degree in transportation engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
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