In December, Burn Design Lab Executive Director, Jeremy Su, and Sr. Engineering Volunteer, Justin Wimpey traveled to Sierra Leone to work alongside Westwind Energy (WWE) on the beta production design of the household wood cookstove for rural use. This visit marked a major milestone in the collaboration of this design that started earlier in 2025 with a field visit to conduct user research by BDL’s own Patrick Flores and Aaron Nyarkotey. With the BDL team back on the ground with the WWE production team, the stoves entered the first production run with custom tooling and manufacturing workflow. By the end of their visit, the first shipment of 200 locally manufactured stoves was delivered to WWE’s implementing partners, signaling the beginning of a new chapter for households ready to safely cook without smoke.

What makes this project distinctive is not only the technology, but the relationships behind it. The cookstove was developed through close collaboration between BDL, WWE, and community partners in Sierra Leone. Each design decision, from durability to fuel efficiency, was shaped by local manufacturing expertise and by listening to how families actually cook, every day.

The first 200 stoves were delivered into communities where partners like The Rewilding Company are already working alongside families to protect forests and strengthen livelihoods. This alignment matters. Clean cooking is not an isolated intervention here, it is part of a broader, place-based approach to community and environmental resilience.

That collaboration came to life in Poilal, Sierra Leone, where WWE and The Rewilding Company trained local community leaders on proper use and benefits of the new stoves. This cookstove rollout strengthens The Rewilding Company’s ongoing efforts to protect mangroves and restore forests by reducing demand for fuelwood. For WWE, it reinforces a commitment to local manufacturing and job creation. For Burn Design Lab, it reflects a core belief that design only succeeds when it is rooted in partnership and local leadership.

This project is still in its early stages, but the foundation is strong. Initial production systems are in place. Communities are engaged and leading the transition themselves. With continued partnership and donor support, this collaboration is positioned to continue to scale reaching hundreds more families in the near term and laying the groundwork for long-term regional impact.

Burundi faces one of the world’s most urgent clean cooking challenges and one of the most promising opportunities for locally led solutions. Nearly all households in Burundi rely on biomass fuel for cooking on traditional three-stone fires or simple charcoal stoves, which contribute to deforestation and harmful indoor air pollution that disproportionately affects women and children.

KTF Concept, a women-led cookstove manufacturer based in Bujumbura, is tackling this challenge by turning agricultural waste into clean, affordable cooking fuel. Using locally sourced rice husks and coffee residues, KTF produces biomass pellets for use in their Top-lit up-draft (TLUD) cookstoves that boasts a three hour cook time due to the dual gasification and charcoal combustion modes.

KTF reached out to Burn Design Lab to evaluate their existing stove design and manufacturing to provide initial recommendations for improvement in performance, durability, and manufacturing scale. BDL team members Jeremy Su and Sofia Montalbano traveled to Bujumbura to help refine KTF’s biomass pellet stove while meeting local cooking needs, improving efficiency, affordability, durability, and manufacturability within Burundi.

In addition to BDL’s work, KTF plans to strengthen local value chains and create meaningful economic benefit with grant funding from EEP Africa by installing a solar-powered production facility, generating 40 local jobs, and increasing pellet production from one to ten tons per day.

Testing the stove in the field and working through all the production steps with the team helped identify practical opportunities to improve stove performance, durability, and ease of manufacturing.

KTF’s current project with EEP Africa is expected to provide 5,000 improved cookstoves for more than 27,000 people, reducing an estimated 62,000 tons of CO₂ emissions annually, while providing important cost savings on fuel, a critical benefit in a country where most families live on less than $2 per day.

At the heart of this initiative is women’s leadership and environmental stewardship. In Burundi, heavy reliance on firewood and charcoal has also driven severe deforestation, leaving only 6–7 percent of the country forested. By replacing charcoal stoves in urban areas with cleaner burning stoves using pellets from agricultural waste, the project reduces pressure on forests, improves respiratory health, and saves households money.