Apart from the constant challenge of raising money to pay staff salaries and food bills, the biggest headache for Ugandan schools is sourcing timber for cooking. The time and cost of securing regular supplies of wood fuel are immense. What is more, cooking with firewood has serious health and environmental consequences.
The number of children to be catered for in the Humanist schools is large, ranging from just under 200 at Kasese Municipal High School, to around 250 at each of the 3 Kasese primary schools, 280 at Kanungu, 480 at Eagle’s View and 680 at Katumba primaries, with a further 450 in the primary school and over 800 in the high school at Isaac Newton. Boarders range from 15% at Katumba Primary to over 90% at Isaac Newton High School. Preparing meals for such large numbers is a logistical challenge. Substantial quantities of raw food ingredients, wood fuel and water must be harnessed to ensure that meals are available 7 days a week. Day students are provided with breakfast of maize-flour porridge and lunch, typically comprising posho (a maize mash) and beans. Additionally, boarding students require a substantial evening meal.
Delivering meals in a timely fashion has become more difficult as the schools have grown. The traditional cooking method, using a large pot resting on 3 stones over an open fire, is slow and inefficient. Using funds donated by UHST supporters our schools have gradually replaced open-fires with wood-burning stoves. This has reduced firewood consumption by up to one-third. As well as saving money it has reduced the schools’ impact on the environment and provided clean, less smoky conditions for cooks. However, even with well-designed stoves, wood use was still high, with Isaac Newton High School still requiring 14 lorry loads of timber each term at a cost of around £1,200.
Due to growing deforestation in Uganda, sourcing timber has becoming more difficult. Schools face higher transport costs as they bring wood from more distant locations. Pressure on dwindling forest reserves has meant that suppliers rarely have time to leave wood to dry adequately before sale. They are under pressure to supply newly felled, green timber, which burns less well and generates less heat. It also burns with more smoke which endangers the health of school cooks.
UHST is always on the lookout for cost-effective ways to reduce or eliminate wood burning. As Uganda generates abundant clean electricity from hydroelectric power plants on the River Nile, renewable electricity would appear to be the obvious answer. However, there are substantial snags. We have failed to find electric stoves that can heat the huge cooking pots used by schools. Furthermore, as the demand for electricity in Uganda’s growing economy is now outstripping supply, power cuts are a fact of daily life. Consequently, electricity has become an unreliable energy source for school cooking.
In recent years UHST has explored several supposedly sustainable alternatives to wood burning. An engineer from a U.S. university approached us with a Top Loading UpDraft (TLUD) Stove that burnt agricultural waste (corn cobs). However, the stove was still polluting, and no feasible way could be found to scale it up to meet the cooking needs of a school. A group of engineers at the University of Upsala in Sweden examined for us the feasibility of scaling up a new solar technology they had developed for cooking. Their prototype was capable of cooking for groups of up to 20 or 30, but they could find no way to scale it up to cook for several hundred children and staff.
When we examined the cooking process in detail it was evident that much of the energy is used to raise the temperature of water before the cooking process could start. In Uganda, which sits astride the equator, using the sun to pre-heat water before use in cooking seemed to be worth a try. Earlier this year, as a trial we installed a roof-top solar-water heater at Isaac Newton High School. Being on the equator, most afternoons the hot ground promotes rising air and cloud formation, which cuts out insolation. However, there is usually sufficient sunshine in the mornings to enable a solar heater to raise the temperature of water to 80oC or more. This pre-heated water is being hose-piped directly into cooking pots on wood-burning stoves, which then undertake the cooking process (see picture).
The solar-water heater has been hugely cost-effective. It cost £900 to install. The ready “free” supply of pre- heated water reduced firewood use from 14 lorry loads to between 9 or 10 loads in the first term – a saving to the school of £300. So, cost savings over 3 terms easily repay the capital cost of the heater within a year. Not only are solar heaters cost-effective, they bring additional health and environmental benefits by reducing wood burning.
Our objective now is to install a solar water heater at each of the remaining 7 school sites, at a cost of £900 per school. We hope that different local Humanist groups and other Humanist friends might respond to the challenge of installing a solar-water heater in each of the schools. If we succeed it will substantially reduce school outgoings and make them more sustainable financially and environmentally.
Breaking school dependence on firewood
Posted: August 7, 2026 by Steve Hurd
Apart from the constant challenge of raising money to pay staff salaries and food bills, the biggest headache for Ugandan schools is sourcing timber for cooking. The time and cost of securing regular supplies of wood fuel are immense. What is more, cooking with firewood has serious health and environmental consequences.
The number of children to be catered for in the Humanist schools is large, ranging from just under 200 at Kasese Municipal High School, to around 250 at each of the 3 Kasese primary schools, 280 at Kanungu, 480 at Eagle’s View and 680 at Katumba primaries, with a further 450 in the primary school and over 800 in the high school at Isaac Newton. Boarders range from 15% at Katumba Primary to over 90% at Isaac Newton High School. Preparing meals for such large numbers is a logistical challenge. Substantial quantities of raw food ingredients, wood fuel and water must be harnessed to ensure that meals are available 7 days a week. Day students are provided with breakfast of maize-flour porridge and lunch, typically comprising posho (a maize mash) and beans. Additionally, boarding students require a substantial evening meal.
Delivering meals in a timely fashion has become more difficult as the schools have grown. The traditional cooking method, using a large pot resting on 3 stones over an open fire, is slow and inefficient. Using funds donated by UHST supporters our schools have gradually replaced open-fires with wood-burning stoves. This has reduced firewood consumption by up to one-third. As well as saving money it has reduced the schools’ impact on the environment and provided clean, less smoky conditions for cooks. However, even with well-designed stoves, wood use was still high, with Isaac Newton High School still requiring 14 lorry loads of timber each term at a cost of around £1,200.
Due to growing deforestation in Uganda, sourcing timber has becoming more difficult. Schools face higher transport costs as they bring wood from more distant locations. Pressure on dwindling forest reserves has meant that suppliers rarely have time to leave wood to dry adequately before sale. They are under pressure to supply newly felled, green timber, which burns less well and generates less heat. It also burns with more smoke which endangers the health of school cooks.
UHST is always on the lookout for cost-effective ways to reduce or eliminate wood burning. As Uganda generates abundant clean electricity from hydroelectric power plants on the River Nile, renewable electricity would appear to be the obvious answer. However, there are substantial snags. We have failed to find electric stoves that can heat the huge cooking pots used by schools. Furthermore, as the demand for electricity in Uganda’s growing economy is now outstripping supply, power cuts are a fact of daily life. Consequently, electricity has become an unreliable energy source for school cooking.
In recent years UHST has explored several supposedly sustainable alternatives to wood burning. An engineer from a U.S. university approached us with a Top Loading UpDraft (TLUD) Stove that burnt agricultural waste (corn cobs). However, the stove was still polluting, and no feasible way could be found to scale it up to meet the cooking needs of a school. A group of engineers at the University of Upsala in Sweden examined for us the feasibility of scaling up a new solar technology they had developed for cooking. Their prototype was capable of cooking for groups of up to 20 or 30, but they could find no way to scale it up to cook for several hundred children and staff.
When we examined the cooking process in detail it was evident that much of the energy is used to raise the temperature of water before the cooking process could start. In Uganda, which sits astride the equator, using the sun to pre-heat water before use in cooking seemed to be worth a try. Earlier this year, as a trial we installed a roof-top solar-water heater at Isaac Newton High School. Being on the equator, most afternoons the hot ground promotes rising air and cloud formation, which cuts out insolation. However, there is usually sufficient sunshine in the mornings to enable a solar heater to raise the temperature of water to 80oC or more. This pre-heated water is being hose-piped directly into cooking pots on wood-burning stoves, which then undertake the cooking process (see picture).
The solar-water heater has been hugely cost-effective. It cost £900 to install. The ready “free” supply of pre- heated water reduced firewood use from 14 lorry loads to between 9 or 10 loads in the first term – a saving to the school of £300. So, cost savings over 3 terms easily repay the capital cost of the heater within a year. Not only are solar heaters cost-effective, they bring additional health and environmental benefits by reducing wood burning.
Our objective now is to install a solar water heater at each of the remaining 7 school sites, at a cost of £900 per school. We hope that different local Humanist groups and other Humanist friends might respond to the challenge of installing a solar-water heater in each of the schools. If we succeed it will substantially reduce school outgoings and make them more sustainable financially and environmentally.
Category: News