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FILM · 4 MIN

The System

The ACE One cookstove and the system around it, in daily use in Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Lesotho and Cambodia.

Chapters

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This is ACE: taking on charcoal

  1. This is ACE.
  2. A system in use every day, in households across Africa and Asia.
  3. What we're taking on is charcoal.
  4. In sub-Saharan Africa, 195 million people cook mainly on it.
  5. And traditional kilns burn about six kilos of wood for every kilo of charcoal.

The ACE One, a fan gasifier

  1. Most improved stoves are natural draft: the fire pulls in its own air.
  2. The ACE One is a fan gasifier.
  3. A small fan, run on its own solar power, blows air into the fire.
  4. With more oxygen, the fire burns harder and hotter, until the biomass turns to gas.
  5. And then it burns with a strong, hot flame, which, like fossil gas, is smokeless.

Why smokeless matters

  1. On a traditional fire, a family breathes smoke at every meal, for years.
  2. That smoke causes an estimated 2.8 to 2.9 million deaths a year, more than 300,000 of them children under five.
  3. The ACE One also uses 50 to 85% less fuel than an open fire.
  4. The same solar power runs a light and charges a phone.
  5. This is what runs around it.

Our own factories

  1. It starts in our own factories.
  2. We build the stoves in Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and soon in West Africa.

Sales on instalments

  1. A seller sells a cookstove on instalments.
  2. The app records who the customer is, which stove and which payment plan.
  3. Every stove can be traced, from the factory to the kitchen.

Payments by phone

  1. The customer pays it off by phone.
  2. MTN in Uganda, Wave in Senegal, M-Pesa in Lesotho and Kenya, ABA in Cambodia.
  3. Every payment lands on the right loan.

Cooking data and service

  1. The stove records how long it cooks.
  2. At each sync, that goes to the cloud.
  3. So we see which stoves are cooking every day, and which go quiet.
  4. When there's less cooking, our team sees it on the map.
  5. Every visit and every repair is recorded.

Almost any biomass

  1. The ACE One burns almost any biomass: wood, crop waste, coconut shells, briquettes, pellets.
  2. Whatever a family has to hand, or can buy down the road.
  3. Gas, ethanol and pellet-only stoves stop when the supply does.
  4. This one keeps cooking.
  5. Families buy our fuel because it's cheaper or easier, not because they have to.

Ordering fuel in the app

  1. Customers order it in the same app.
  2. They pay, then collect it or have it delivered.
  3. Only the handover, with a code, counts as delivered.
  4. And stock updates itself.

Work and pay

  1. Sellers and after-sales teams are salaried, with a bonus on results.
  2. Shops earn per handover, and riders per delivery.
  3. All of it goes straight to their phones.
  4. We already employ over a hundred people across Africa and Asia.
  5. In Senegal alone, we're building to hundreds of full-time jobs.

CO2

  1. From the same data we calculate the CO2 reduction.
  2. Every tonne traces back to a stove's exact use, or to the recorded switch to pellets and briquettes.
  3. A sample is used only to calibrate.
  4. In Senegal, that reduction is already contracted, under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Results and new opportunities

  1. Each of these moments is recorded, with proof.
  2. A month of cooking.
  3. A sale.
  4. A bag of fuel handed over.
  5. A repair.
  6. That record also opens up new opportunities.
  7. Results-based finance and philanthropy that are fully transparent, and reach exactly the households they're meant for.

Already running

  1. And it's already running, in more households every day.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 195 million people cook mainly on charcoal. The ACE One is a fan gasifier: a small fan, on its own solar power, blows air into the fire until the biomass turns to gas. It then burns with a strong, hot flame which, like fossil gas, is smokeless. That matters: smoke from cooking on traditional fires causes an estimated 2.8 to 2.9 million deaths a year, more than 300,000 of them children under five (WHO, 2021 data; State of Global Air 2025, 2023 data). The ACE One also uses 50 to 85% less fuel than an open fire, and the same solar power runs a light and charges a phone.

Around each stove runs one system:

  • We build the stoves in our own factories, in Southern Africa, Southeast Asia and East Africa, and soon in West Africa.
  • Stoves are sold on instalments and paid off by phone, with MTN, Wave, M-Pesa and ABA.
  • Every stove records how long it cooks, so our team sees when one goes quiet. Every visit and repair is recorded.
  • The ACE One burns almost any biomass. Families buy our fuel because it's cheaper or easier, not because they have to, and order it in the same app.
  • Sellers, shops and riders are paid straight to their phones. We employ over a hundred people across Africa and Asia.
  • The CO2 reduction is calculated from the same data: every tonne traces back to a stove's recorded use, or to a recorded switch to pellets and briquettes. In Senegal, it is already contracted under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Every month of cooking, every sale, every bag of fuel and every repair is recorded with proof. That opens the way to results-based finance and philanthropy that reach exactly the households they are meant for.

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