Lighting a Koko burner that uses the company’s fuel
Photographer: Khadija Farah for Bloomberg GreenSelling a Cleaner, Affordable Cooking Fuel for Kenyan Homes
Nairobi’s Koko has equipped 675,000 households with ethanol, used in the company’s cookers and sold over an app.
Cooking fuels used across sub-Saharan Africa are a double engine of global warming. Tropical forests and savanna woodlands are hacked down to supply charcoal and firewood, removing an invaluable carbon sink. Then the choking smoke from millions of cooking fires releases planet-warming pollution alongside carbon monoxide that sickens millions of Africans.
That’s the dual problem Greg Murray and three other co-founders set out to solve when they established Koko Networks Ltd. in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Today the company supplies more than 675,000 households with clean-burning ethanol, which is used in the company’s cookers and sold over an app.