Burn Design Lab is proud to share several exciting updates from our Ghana team, led by Country Director and West Africa Business Development Lead, Mr. Aaron Nyarkotey.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Haydon Kirkwood Charitable Trust, BDL installed and distributed 15 improved shea roasters to cooperatives in Northern Ghana. BDL’s improved shea roasters help cooperatives improve hand-crafted shea butter processing efficiency and productivity, strengthening local livelihoods in the process. Haydon Kirkwood Charitable Trust’s grant supports BDL’s efforts to directly impact up to 1,000 women, helping save time and money, reduce firewood consumption, and improve the health of these hard-working women.

Building on this success, BDL is exploring new funding partnerships to expand improved roaster installations across Ghana and the wider West Africa region.

We are currently engaging with Fair Trade Africa, and the International Labor Organization to explore collaborations that will further extend the reach of our clean energy technologies. In another milestone, Burn Design Lab has joined the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) Ghana. This membership opens valuable connections with U.S.-affiliated organizations operating in Ghana, including Kosmos Energy, Coca-Cola, Newmont Corporation, and Cargill. Through AMCHAM, BDL will be better positioned to build partnerships that advance our mission to design and scale clean cooking technologies for community and environmental impact.

We are also pleased to welcome Mr. Baba Amadu to the BDL Ghana team. Based in Tamale, Baba brings a strong background in field work, research, and community development. His focus will be on engaging with shea cooperatives where our roasters are installed, conducting user research, and supporting monitoring and evaluation activities to help BDL continually improve our designs and impact.

We extend our gratitude to Mr. Abdul-Fatawu Salifu, who recently transitioned from his role as Field Associate. His dedication and service to BDL over the last 6+ years has been invaluable to our mission and the communities we serve, and we wish him and his family the best.

Recent research by Burn Design Lab’s, Sally König, highlights an important truth in clean cooking design: one size does not fit all. König is a Mechanical Engineering student at TU Ilmenau in Germany, working as BDL’s Lab Technician on a 12-month contract while researching his thesis, titled “Regional Diversity and Engineering Challenges in the Development of Clean Cookstoves in Africa – An Experimental and Numerical Study of Pot-Stove Interactions.” His research proves that a stove’s performance depends heavily on the interface and space between the stove top and the pot it’s paired with.

König’s computational fluid dynamics models and lab testing results clearly show that the performance of the stoves strongly depend on the respective pot shape, hence why a universal cookstove solution for the entire African continent is not realistic. This is why BDL has focused on human-centered design over the last 15 years of development, working with local partners and collecting user research from the regions we work, so that our cleaner-burning stoves are tailored to the specific pots and cooking traditions of each region.

The experimental results demonstrate the combination of the BURN Kunikoa stove, with the Sufuria flat bottomed pot it was designed for, achieved the best overall performance. With a quick boiling time of 18 minutes for 5L of water, a WHO guideline Tier 4/5 efficiency, and low CO emissions of 2.4 mg/kJ, this configuration provided the most effective heat transfer and cleanest combustion. The CFD model shows local flow velocities of up to 3 m/s promoting convective heat transfer, allowing a higher percentage of the released energy to be transferred effectively into the pot.

The same stove paired with a Senegalese or Sierra Leone round bottomed pot, performed much worse in the lab: never reaching a boil, a Tier 2 WHO efficiency, and ~50% increase in CO emissions. The CFD model shows the flow velocity in the gap decreasing to 1.1 m/s, caused by the larger distance between the pot and the top deck. König’s findings highlight BDL’s attention to detail, including the small deviations in pot geometry or channel width, significantly altering the flow characteristics and the thermal efficiency.

BDL’s ongoing work in West Africa reflects this approach. Our household stoves for Sierra Leone, designed with local partners, adapts proven design principles to regional needs. By aligning stove and pot design with local manufacturing realities, Burn Design Lab and its partners are helping create cleaner, more efficient, and regionally appropriate cooking solutions - improving health, conserving resources, and supporting sustainable livelihoods across Africa.

We’re thrilled to welcome Kathryn Weber as Burn Design Lab’s new Director of Development and Communications. Kathryn brings more than 14 years of experience in fundraising, donor engagement, and global program communications—along with a deep passion for advancing health, livelihoods, and environmental outcomes through sustainable solutions.

Kathryn has worked extensively at the intersection of international development and philanthropy, helping secure transformative support for programs across Africa and Asia. She has led multi-million-dollar humanitarian and development initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. State Department , World Health Organization, International Rescue Committee, and other leading international NGOs. Her experience includes overseeing large-scale initiatives across Myanmar, Liberia, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka.

BDL’s mission to improve women’s health and protect the environment through cleaner burning cookstoves drew Kathryn to our organization. She is excited to apply her expertise to help strengthen our donor community and expand our global impact.

Having recently returned to Washington State, Kathryn looks forward to connecting with our partners, donors, and supporters as she leads Burn Design Lab’s fundraising and communications efforts into our next chapter of growth.