Initiated by Christian Rakos and Gilles Gauthier, two long-standing biomass professionals, the Sustainable School Cooking Program is a non-profit initiative originating from the World Bioenergy Association that provides clean biomass cooking solutions to schools in Sub-Saharan Africa through a comprehensive end-to-end service.

Dr. Christian Rakos has worked in the bioenergy sector since the 1980s. He began his career at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, joined later the Austrian Energy Agency before becoming CEO of the Austrian Pellet Industry Association for nearly 20 years. He also served in parallel as President of the European Pellet Council during the key implementation phase of the ENplus certification, the world leading quality certification scheme for pellets. Since 2020, he has held the role of President of the World Bioenergy Association. Throughout his career, Dr. Rakos has played a key role in developing the biomass market in Europe and beyond. He has established a dedicated working group of companies currently active in developing the African pellet market that is meeting regularly since 2021 and will be strongly involved in the execution of the proposed project. Christian Rakos has a Ph.D in technical sciences from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria.

Christian Rakos

Gilles Gauthier has worked in the bioenergy sector since 2009. He began his career as a project engineer for an agri-pellet producer, before taking on leadership roles at the Belgian Bioenergy Association and later at Bioenergy Europe (formerly the European Bioenergy Association), where he worked for nearly a decade. He then joined Hawkins Wright, a biomass-focused consultancy, before founding Bioenergy Partner, providing advisory services to clients across the international pellet sector. Over the course of his career, Gilles successfully carried out research in pellet formulation and combustion behaviour, led the ENplus certification program for nearly ten years, coordinated several EU-funded bioenergy projects, and made significant contributions to market intelligence in the pellet industry. Gilles Gauthier holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering with a specialization in environmental technologies from the Technical Engineering Institute of Huy, Belgium.

Gilles Gauthier

Malnutrition remains a major developmental challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, with high rates of undernutrition affecting children’s growth, health, and educational outcomes. School meal programs have emerged as a crucial strategy to combat malnutrition by providing regular, nutrient-rich meals to millions of children.

Source: WFP, FAO and School Meals Coalition kick off ‘Healthy school meals I prepare’

Fuel preparation

In most schools, fuel preparation is extremely labour-intensive, involving timber unloading, chopping, transport across the school site, and splitting prior to use. This process consumes significant staff time and resources.

Figure: Fuel preparation, school in Uganda – Source: Sustainable School Cooking Program

Smoke 

Smoke emissions inside and around school kitchens are among the most critical challenges of traditional cooking systems. In some cases, particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) concentrations exceed 1,000 µg/Nm³, representing extremely hazardous exposure levels. Poor combustion and inadequate ventilation severely degrade local air quality and contribute to health impacts linked to approximately 815,000 premature deaths annually in Africa (IEA).

Figure: Smoke exposure, school in Uganda – Source: Sustainable School Cooking Program

Heat control

Current stove designs offer little to no heat control. As a result, fuel must often be manually removed from the combustion chamber to reduce output. Difficulties in heat control also leads to uneven cooking, and frequent food burning. Burnt residues increase food losses and significantly extend pot cleaning times.

Figure: Hear adjustment and pot cleaning - Source: Sustainable School Cooking Program

Room temperature

Most cookstoves in use lack a closed combustion chamber, or operate with openings left permanently open to maintain sufficient draft. This leads to substantial heat radiation into the kitchen, causing excessive indoor temperatures and further deteriorating working conditions for 

Time for meal preparation

Overall, the full cooking cycle—fuel preparation, fire start-up, cooking (limited by poor heat control), and pot cleaning—is excessively time-consuming.

Meal preparation costs

The combination of poor fuel quality, inefficient stove design, and long operating hours results in significantly higher energy costs than those of efficient modern systems. This inefficiency creates a heavy economic burden and can directly constrain meal preparation, leading to reduced food quantities or lower nutritional quality. 

Our solution

The Sustainable School Cooking Program delivers clean biomass cooking solutions to schools in Sub-Saharan Africa through a comprehensive, end-to-end service. From initial assessment to long-term operation, we support schools throughout the full transition process.

As a solution provider, we offer:

• Initial performance assessment: comprehensive testing of existing cooking systems
• Biomass supply: guidance on sustainable biomass procurement and production (wood chips or pellets)
• Burners and cookstoves: identification of the most suitable solution, including retrofitting existing stoves or installing new systems 
• Installation: full installation of modern biomass cooking systems
• Operation: training of local operators to ensure safe and efficient use
• Maintenance: training of local technicians for long-term system maintenance
• Final performance evaluation: testing and verification of performance improvements

Our impact

Our modern biomass solutions enable the preparation of nutritious meals in a healthy, sustainable, efficient, cost-effective, locally sourced, and practical manner. Specifically, the main improvements include:

• SMOKE: Drastic reduction of smoke in the kitchen
• TIME: Drastic reduction in time required for fuel preparation, fire management, and meal preparation
• EFFICIENCY: Substantial reduction in fuel consumption due to efficient stoves and optimized combustion
• COSTS: Strong reduction in meal preparation costs through savings on fuel and labor
• COMFORT: Improved operational comfort thanks to automated burner operation
• REGULATION: Enhanced heat control through automated burners
• CLEANING: Considerable reduction in pot-cleaning effort due to minimal food burning
• FOOD WASTAGE: Significant reduction of discarded food thanks to prevention of burning
• TEMPERATURE: Noticeable reduction in ambient kitchen temperature
• SUSTAINABILITY: Significant reduction of GHG emissions through improved efficiency and the use of sustainable, locally sourced biomass
• LOCAL ECONOMY: Support for the local economy by promoting local biomass fuel production from abundant residues and the local manufacturing of advanced cookstoves

Rwanda

Several pilot projects are currently demonstrating viable alternatives. Pellet burners from Polish manufacturer KIPI have been deployed at St. Michael’s School in Rwanda and have operated successfully for over one year using pellets produced locally by Biomassters. In addition, ULMA pellet burners (Sweden) were installed in ten Rwandan schools in autumn 2025 and are currently undergoing performance testing and assessment. Building on these initiatives, the Rwandan Ministry of Education has signed an MoU to convert 200 schools to modern cooking solutions.

A polyfuel gasification burner from CCS (Vietnam) is also being tested in Rwanda. This system can operate on both wood chips and pellets and is designed for retrofit applications. 

Figure: Polyfuel gasification burners - Source: CCS/Gasio

Uganda

In Uganda, one school is undergoing a conversion of three cookstoves to pellets using ULMA burners. 

Figure: Traditional cookstoves and retrofitted cookstove - Source: Sustainable School Cooking Program

Zambia

Smaller CCS gasification burners will be tested with pellets in Zambia in 2026, reflecting the smaller size and lower energy demand of school kitchens in Zambia.  

Results

In all conversion cases comprehensive data collection and testing was performed to compare the performance of pellet technology with the previous firewood operation. The provisional results show the following benefits:

• Smokeless cooking: cleaner air inside and outside the kitchen
  • The retrofitting to pellets leads to a drastic reduction of particulate matter (PM2.5 & PM10) emission inside and outside the kitchen.
• Fuel saving: reduction of fuel consumption
  • The retrofitting to pellets leads to a drastic reduction of fuel consumption.
• High efficiency and sustainable energy
  • The retrofitting to pellets combined with a cookstove upgrade leads to a strong increase of efficiency.

Figure: Effective thermal efficiency per stove - Source: Master Thesis Thomas Roelofs 2025

• Precise heat control: better results with every meal and no burned food wasted
• Reduced temperature in the kitchen
• Time savings: significantly reduce time spent on fuel collection and meal preparation
• Cost reduction: fuel costs and staff costs reduction
• Use of biomass fuel sustainably produced from abundant local biomass residues