Energy poverty cycle in Malawi: Trees vanish, women suffer

Patricia Mussa of Kambalame Village in Machinga District walks out of her smoky grass-thatched kitchen

while sneezing and scratching her itchy, watery eyes.

“I am forced to smoke from the open fireplace every time I am cooking meals for my family,” says the

mother of five in Traditional Authority (T/A) Chamba.

During meal preparation, spirals of dark smoke ooze from almost every household’s kitchen in the

village. This is also a typical sight among millions of Malawians who do not have access to affordable

clean energy for cooking but rely on firewood and charcoal.

These smoky cooking routines increase Mussa and other women’s inhalation of indoor air pollution,

which according to the Ministry of Health kills almost 13 000 people in Malawi annually.

The World Health Organisation reports that indoor air pollution is deadly and kills more people in the

world than HIV and Aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Energy Poverty

According to the Ministry of Energy, almost 98 percent of households in Malawi use biomass for cooking

with about 86 percent having no access to electricity. Statistics from the Ministry of Natural Resources

indicate that nearly 97 percent—about nine in every 10 households in the country use charcoal and

firewood for cooking and heating.

Despite Malawi’s vast renewable energy resources and potential, the Ministry of Energy spokesperson,

Austin Theu, says barriers to widespread use of clean fuels and technologies availability, culture and

cost.

“For instance, there is a belief that Nsima cooked on firewood tastes better than done on electricity.

Sometimes liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) becomes scarce and its distribution network is limited,” says

Austin.

Oxfam clean energy project coordinator, Kondwani Mubisa, adds that Malawi remains energy-poor due

to financial, infrastructure, policy and technical challenges.

Mubisa says high dependence on biomass is a barrier to transitioning to clean energy.

“Biomass is widely available and affordable, unlike alternatives such as LPG, biogas, and electric

cooking, which remain expensive and inaccessible for most households,” he says.

The overwhelming demand for wood fuel and laxity of reforestation efforts have exacerbated the forest

trees going up in smoke as nearly every household relies on them. There is huge deforestation across

the country resulting in heavy environmental degradation, which the Food and Agriculture Organisation

of the United Nations (UN) notes has made Malawians vulnerable to the effects of climate

change—floods, landslides, droughts and prolonged dry spells—worsening hunger and poverty.

Mussa says the deforestation is also worsening the misery she bears due to energy poverty.

“Nearby trees have disappeared—they are scarce and costly,” she says amid gasps for fresh air outside

her kitchen. “I have to walk long distances fetching firewood.”

With other women, she leaves home for Chikala Hills at 2 a.m. and comes back around 11:30 a.m. under

the weight of lengthy, bulky bundles of firewood to cook.

Mussa says the gender norms that tie women in kitchens affects young girls.

She explains: “We used to go to the hills on Saturdays and Sundays so that girls would not miss classes,

but the scarcity of trees and the need for three to four bundles of wood to use each week they join us

on these tiring walks some weekdays making them report late for classes or be absent.”

These trips also expose women and girls to sexual violence risking the girls to drop out due to early

pregnancies and marriages.

Demand in cities

Forest reserves are waning at an alarming rate of three percent annually in Malawi.

Every six months, Chrissy John in Machinga, says she is walking further and further to collect enough

wood for cooking.

“We spend over eight hours in the mountains searching for firewood. This steals our productive hours to

manage homes and even engage in income-generating activities,” she laments.

Firewood remains the most used cooking fuel for 87.7 percent of households, but over half of urban

Malawians—54 percent of the households—predominately use charcoal. This is where the majority of

11.3 percent of the population with access to electricity live, but close to three percent of them use it

for cooking.

The national strategy to combat charcoal reads: “With alternative fuel sources underdeveloped,

firewood and charcoal will continue to form a significant part of Malawi’s energy mix for the next few

decades.”

With costly electricity and unreliable supply, there is an increased thirst for firewood and charcoal across

the country that is wiping out forests. The rising demand for charcoal in cities where townships go for

hours without electricity has boomed its production with trucks and bicycles moving in the outlawed

forest produce from all directions.

A charcoal seller, Peter Maluwa from Mgona Village in Phalombe District, says they have run out of trees

to burn into charcoal.

“We buy the commodity from Mozambique because our trees are long gone. However, there is a huge

demand for charcoal pushing us to fell fruit trees,” says Maluwa who cycles over 80 kilometers thrice a

week to Blantyre with three bags of charcoal selling at K25 000 each. They leave Migowi, Phalombe

around 2 am to arrive in Blantyre at 5:15 pm.

Despite the huge demand, another seller, Mcford Thawale, acknowledges that their income-generating

activity keeps them in a vicious cycle of poverty.

“We get slavish prices after the long cycle and the business has contributed to environmental

degradation making us vulnerable to effects of climate change such as prolonged dry spells, drought and

floods that frustrate our crop production efforts to achieve food security,” he says.

Energy poverty is also wiping out trees on the country’s second-largest mountain: Zomba. Women and

children are seen on the road to the Kuchawe Peak balancing bundles of firewood on their heads for

cooking and heating in the populous slum of Chikanda and other areas in Zomba City.

Since 2014, the extinction of natural trees on the slopes of the Zomba Plateau has subjected the city to

annual floods, storms and landslides. Racing rainwater on the bare slopes erodes fertile soils from crop

fields, leaving the fields barren.

Asiyatu Bwanaisa, from Mtiya Ward in Zomba City, says overreliance on biomass due to lack of

sustainable energy places them between a rock and a hard place.

She explains: “My household experiences perennial hunger as the degradation frustrates my crop

production efforts. Floods wash away my crop fields or bury them in silt. We are forced to replant, but

the second crop rarely thrived due to prolonged dry spells.”

Bwanaisa’s harvests from a one-acre plot have been dwindling to four bags of maize from the possible

60 bags.

“This is not enough to take my family of seven to the next harvesting season,” she says.

In the southern region, about 5.9 million people are experiencing perennial hunger as the degradation

amid the impacts of climate change affected their crop production efforts.

To strengthen the sustainable use of biomass by lessening pressure on forests, alternative energy

sources are being promoted by various projects among communities including affordable solar

solutions, briquettes, and energy-efficient cookstoves that use less firewood for cooking than open fires

marked with three stones, among others.

In 2012, the government rolled out an upscaling improved cook stove project among households that

was achieved by 2020. It set another target of five million cookstoves by 2030.

Theu says the government is also committed to upscaling and investing in universal clean cooking for

Malawians.

He says: “We have deliberate policies and strategies guiding the scaling up of clean cooking that is

enabling rural population to phase out open fires, ensure availability of LPG, green economy

investments and incentives for clean cooking energy to be prioritized.”

Renewable energy advocate, Kenneth Mtago, says there is a need to nurture an eco-friendly mindset

among the majority of communities with no access to electricity to use biomass sustainably to replenish

forest cover.

“We have to do away with three-stone open fireplaces because the cookstoves are crucial in reducing

pressure on trees and save up to 30 percent of the household budget for energy, but we should be

planting more trees and ensuring they grow,” he says.

Malawi with support from the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are

considering making the energy policy more gender-responsive during the ongoing policy review

following advocacy from players in the energy sector for gender integration in energy policies so that

women can make decisions and benefit from clean energy solutions.

John says investing in clean cooking solutions is crucial for their public health and gender equality.

She says: “Access to renewable energy will empower us to start and grow businesses in agriculture and

small-scale enterprises that require reliable energy.”

Theu who is also the chief energy officer says Malawi requires about $596 million investment to achieve

universal access to clean cooking.

He says: “We are engaging various stakeholders in expanding electricity generation, connectivity to the

masses, and embracing of simple cooking technologies among others.”

For Mussa and other women bearing the brunt of energy poverty, quick access to low-energy

cookstoves for cleaner energy technologies and alternative cooking fuels are vital to saving their lives

and trees.