CONSULTANCY - Comparative Feasibility Study of Household Cooking Fuel and Cooking modalities Options in Sudan and Chad

Solidarités International (SI) is a French humanitarian organization providing lifesaving assistance to populations affected by armed conflict, natural disasters, and epidemics for more than 40 years. Independent of political or religious affiliation, SI specializes in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH); food and livelihood security; emergency shelter; and integrated multisectoral responses.

SI operates in over 23 countries, with 2,400 staff working to restore access to essential services and strengthen community resilience.

Solidarités International (SI) is planning to implement sanitation and energy-resilience interventions in Sudan and Chad to reduce reliance on wood-based fuels for cooking and to look for local options such as treated and properly contained fecal sludge (FS) waste as well as improved cooking modalities options, based on the main food cooked by local populations.

In the IDPs camp of Tawilah, in Sudan, wood-based fuel has been until now the main fuel for cooking purposes, majority utilizing traditional 3 stone triangular shaped stoves/structure and mud-clay/dung stoves and in few households' metallic portable stoves. However, a huge increase in population has caused a massive depletion of the bush around camp and an increase of wood cost, especially during rainy season when the bush is less accessible. Complementary co-materials (e.g., binders, rice husk, sawdust) that may be useful to produce alternative fuel are also scarce. In the camps hosting a large and growing population (about 450,000-700,000 people at the moment) of IDPs due to continued conflict in Darfur, the concentration of thousands of households in a limited area has sharply increased the demand for cooking fuel, accelerating the depletion of surrounding natural resources and highlighting the urgent need to identify feasible solution for alternative fuel either from FS solutions or from other sources.

In Chad, in the spontaneous site in the town of Adré in Ouaddaï, which hosts more than 200,000 refugees, Chadian government has been pursuing a policy of environmental preservation and actively combating deforestation for several years, but the refugees’ influx of the last years needs additional preservation measures, especially using wood-based fuel with a traditional 3 stone triangular shaped structure for cooking.

Field experience and secondary data highlight contrasting conditions in the two contexts of Sudan and Chad that warrant a comparative feasibility approach, in terms of cooking practices but as well in terms of potential alternative for cooking fuel/ technique (such as treated human sludge).