SOAS Research Online

Abstract

A fundamental component of resource conservation in Ethiopian development programmes is sought in part through the dissemination of improved stoves. However, as an evaluation of a range of stove programmes reveals, the absence of applied research by government and non-governmental organizations together with fundamental constraints arising out of the wider development context is resulting in programmes that are poorly targeted, inflexibly implemented and largely unable to meet the energy needs of poor rural and urban households. Despite these problems, donors continue to fund such projects, in large part because project evaluations are not made public, because of a policy lacuna, and ultimately because development thinking appears locked into finding a quick technology fix for what are essentially long-term, intractable sociopolitical processes and problems.