The context

Since 2015, Burkina Faso has faced overlapping crises: political instability, a booming population, displacement from conflict, and climate vulnerabilities. These pressures have worsened poverty in rural areas, reduced farmland productivity, increased hunger, and deepened malnutrition.

About 90% of people still cook with traditional biomass, like wood or charcoal, because they lack access to cleaner fuels. This reliance speeds up deforestation, degrades the land, and pollutes indoor air, hitting women and children the hardest.

The project

To counter this trend, Livelihoods is supporting an efficient cookstoves and sustainable agricultural practices project. Launched in 2014, the project aims to reduce wood consumption and hence decrease deforestation. It also strives to restore degraded land through agroforestry techniques, increasing yields and resilience to droughts. The project has impacted 210,000 people over a period of 10 years. It is co-financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and implemented on the ground by the local NGO tiipaalga, with the help of SOS Sahel, an NGO operating in the Sahel region, and the CIRAD, the French agricultural research and cooperation organization working for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions. 

tiipaalga and Livelihoods equipped more than 29,000 households with improved cookstoves. These stoves are made from banco which comes from inexpensive locally-sourced ingredients: manure, straw, water, and clay. The cookstoves reduce household wood consumption by 50% compared to the traditional 3-stone Burkinabe stoves, which will help minimize deforestation and bring benefits to families. Indeed, 100% of women surveyed perceive a reduction in smoke level exposure and incidence of coughing, respiratory illness, and eye irritation. 

The Livelihoods-tiipaalga project covers 222 villages across nine communes in the provinces of Bam and Loroum in the country’s north.

What sets this project apart from Livelihoods’ other clean cookstove projects is that it spends nothing on producing or delivering stoves—instead, local women are trained to build their own eco-friendly household cookstoves, so the entire budget goes toward that training. An extensive network of more than 2,000 women leaders across the villages oversees the training sessions, and after the initial mobilization period, each village keeps a permanent point of contact.  

From 2016 to 2021, with the support of AFD, the Livelihoods project offered sustainable agriculture training to farmers in 30 villages. These simple, affordable and efficient practices aim at restoring land degraded by droughts, overgrazing and erosion. Practices include: stone rows, zaï, and human-assisted natural regeneration practices. A “warrantage” system is also being implemented with support from SOS Sahel to make farmers less vulnerable to market fluctuations and seasonality. Learn more.

Social, economic, & environmental impacts

Beyond the direct health benefits of reducing women’s exposure to noxious smoke, the project also generates broader social benefits. By putting women at the center of the project and supporting them with new cookstove building skills, they take on leadership roles within their villages. More efficient cookstoves allow for women to spend less time cooking and collecting firewood, giving them more free time—valuable time they spent with their families or starting new businesses. This project promotes economic empowerment through a self-administered microcredit fund that enables women leaders to launch additional revenue-generating activities like sheep fattening.  

Moreover, this project helped increase food diversification through sustainable farming practices. With the support of AFD, a community garden has been implemented in each of the 30 villages involved in the project. In a region where malnutrition impacts 20% of population, trees are an important source of food through its fruits and nuts, while also acting as fodder for cattle. These community gardens are managed by women, who receive a small plot, seeds, access to water, and equipment, contributing to their families’ food security and diversifying their income.

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