SLEEPLESS NIGHTS NECESSITATE TAKING ACTION

From 1972 till 1975 Regula Ochsner, later to become the initiator of the solar cooker project in Madagascar, worked for the Swiss development aid organisation (now called DEZA) in Tuléar in the south of Madagascar on a women’s programme. In 1998 Regula Ochsner revisited Madagascar and was dismayed to see that large forested areas had been cut down in the meantime, and parts of the diverse and unique flora and fauna were lost as a result of the deforestation.
She realized that within a short time the country would loose its livelihood if deforestation continued at this rate. As the largest quantity of the wood was used as firewood to prepare food, she began looking for alternative ways of cooking.

After several sleepless nights she came to the conclusion that something had to be done.

Emergence of the Solar Cooker Project

Upon her return to Switzerland Regula Ochnser started to search alternative cooking methods which required neither firewood nor charcoal. She finally came across Eduard Probst, a retired carpenter in Hölstein, who was enthusiastic about her ideas straight away. He had studied the Sahara Bedouins 20 years before and had developed a solar cooker, which is still used in many countries around the globe. He also founded the association for the development of solar cookers.

This is how it came about that in the autumn of 2000 a container with assembly kits for 500 solar cookers was sent to Tuléar and the Madagascar solar cooker project was launched. Just a few months later the first solar cookers were being assembled by Malagasy artisans, who worked under a tent roof.

Daniel Ramampiherika, a Malagasy professor for renewable energies at the University of Tuléar contributed considerably to the success of the solar cooker project. He was the president of a local environmental organisation and immediately offered his help. He himself had developed a solar cooker prototype but did not have the means for its production and promotion.

The solar cooker was first demonstrated in Miary und Antakoaky, the villages where Regula Ochsner had worked in the seventies. People were at once convinced  by the functional principle and the advantages of the solar cooker, and most families wanted to buy one on hire purchase. Thanks to reports on the radio and on TV the solar cooker became widely known.

You can find the detailed chronology of the history of the project here.