AUTHOR
By Margaret Nakunza
How one founder turned solid waste into smokeless stoves, and turned smoke-filled kitchens into safer, more productive homes – Every day, millions of households across Kenya’s semi-arid regions light a fire with firewood collected at real cost: hours of a woman’s time, rising deforestation, and toxic smoke inside the home. Green At Mind set out to change that equation, converting solid waste into clean cooking technology and building an entire distribution and entrepreneurship model around it. Below, the founder walks us through the journey, in their own words.
Founding & Journey
Green At Mind was built around converting solid waste into clean cooking technologies for households and businesses. What was the moment that convinced you this was the environmental and health problem worth solving?
The daily collection of firewood was not only increasing the rate of deforestation, it was also filling houses with toxic smoke for health. What convinced me was the rate of premature death from household air pollution. I realized cooking was not just putting a meal on the table, but a matter of sacrifice many rural women take to care for their family.
Your work also includes training young people on climate change and clean energy access in semi-arid, marginalized communities. How did youth empowerment become as central to your mission as the product itself?
We are convinced that the real solution providers are people who have themselves been victims of the problem they are trying to solve, within the range of their available resources. Focusing on training young people coming from households affected by respiratory illness to become solution providers was the only way to build awareness of the crisis and set a foundation for a participative approach to change.
Product & Innovation
Your Relief Stove is designed to cook twice as fast as an open fire and be adapted to end-users’ income levels. What were the biggest design trade-offs between affordability, durability, and performance?
Living with the marginalized community helped me understand the value of time and financial resources. The time women spend collecting firewood in the bush could be spent on economically productive work if a proper alternative existed. We want the user to save up to 50% of cooking time and use that time to generate revenue for their family through other economic activities. Cooking faster with less fuel was the gap that was missing.
“The time women spent in the bush collecting firewood is valuable to be economically productive if there are provisions of proper alternative.”
How do you make sure a household or small business switching from open-fire cooking to your stoves actually sees a real drop in fuel costs and indoor air pollution, not just on paper but in daily use?
We do frequent demonstrations in strategic marketplaces on the functionality of the products and make them available for users. With our sales agents and local distributors, people can access the product within their residential areas, and the cost of our briquettes is lower compared to traditional charcoal on the market.
Business Model & Operations
You work with young entrepreneurs to promote green business models around converting waste into clean energy products. How does that distribution and entrepreneurship layer work commercially?
We leverage a network of 62 local distributors to resell our products to end users. We rely on the trust local business owners and their customers have in each other to introduce our products to the market. For social institutions, we work on a “Stoves Library” model, giving stoves for a five-day trial before they decide to buy or not. 80% of them end up buying the product. It is more convincing for them after trying.
What has been the hardest operational challenge in getting clean cooking technology into semi-arid and marginalized communities where infrastructure and last-mile logistics are difficult?
The hardest challenge has been the perception in the local community around why they should pay money for a stove when they can collect three stones and cook their meal. Introducing a new product means educating the market, which in most cases benefits not just us but other players who may learn from the industry too. We operate in areas where the motorbike is often the only means of transport available for people and goods. That requires passion and a lot of commitment to overcome the cost and remain in operation.
Impact & Communities
Indoor air pollution from open fires is a leading cause of preventable deaths in Kenya. Can you share a story of a household or community where switching to your clean cooking technology visibly changed daily life or health outcomes?
Hassan Ali was one of our early adopters in 2023. He saw a clear difference in the performance of our stoves and decided to become a distributor in Kakuma. To date, he has sold over 380 stoves to his community, backed by his personal testimony. As a businessman with a large family, he easily understood the value of cutting fuel costs to free up money for other productive activities.
How does Green At Mind specifically involve young people and women, who often carry the heaviest burden of fuel collection and cooking, in your green business model?
95% of our staff are youth, with 68% being women. The entire assembly section of our production department consists of women workers. On the field, 80% of our sales agents are youth and women. Their passion alone on the ground attracts the local community to buy from them. A mother at home cooking with smokeless briquettes means her daughters are more likely to stay in school, cutting the school dropout rate tied to firewood collection and reducing the risk of assault in the bush.
Market & Scale
Clean cooking is a crowded but still underpenetrated market across Africa. How is Green At Mind positioning itself against other clean cook stove providers, and what’s your edge?
We offer a full cycle of clean cooking, stove and fuel together, with a variety of products adapted to different income levels. Beyond selling our products, we also provide green credit, loyalty points converted into a micro-insurance for income replacement, targeting customers living on day-to-day revenue. Our community champion model puts group members front and center to promote our product within their circle of influence, making our sales a community system rather than a traditional sales approach. This model lets us operate in rural areas where other players are unwilling to go due to logistics. We empower community members to take the lead.
What does successful scale look like for Green At Mind over the next few years, in households reached, tonnes of waste diverted, or youth entrepreneurs trained?
Our performance is measured by the quality of life of the households using our products. We maintain the durability and efficiency of our product to support a good standard of living for our customers. Having more customers benefit from our micro-insurance program, beyond just using the product, is an additional impact we are proud of. Reaching over 100,000 users in the next two years would be a remarkable achievement from where we started as a company.
Vision & Future
Looking ahead, what’s your bigger vision for Green At Mind and the future of clean energy and green entrepreneurship in Kenya and beyond?
We aim to see every household in Kenya using Green At Mind products, with zero household air pollution. As the clean energy sector evolves rapidly, our growth will keep pace with new technology, and we intend to become the leading producer of clean cooking solutions in the region. Green At Mind is building toward becoming a clean cooking marketplace with real business influence in the region, with our green credit approach transforming cooking into something people look forward to, not endure.
Authors Note: Green At Mind is one of the ventures featured in the Sankalp Africa Changemakers series, spotlighting founders building climate and health solutions from the ground up.
