Stand-alone parabolic solar cookers and rural industrialisation in South Africa

Abstract

Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.

Lack of infrastructural facilities, empowerment, hunger and malnutrition are some of the major challenges facing the rural communities in Southern region of Africa, while the latter two often so because of the choices of whether to buy food or to buy the expensive cooking fuel or other family needs with the insufficient available income; inadequate infrastructures on the other hand has led to rural-urban migration boom amounting to an increase of over 62 percentage of the urban population over the last 15 years thereby adding to the urban unemployment problems in Southern Africa. For this purpose developing and promoting affordable solar cooking/heating system that can use the free available energy of the sun for Southern African condition is of utmost importance. Since Parabolic solar cookers are known to be most effective in terms of heat production, this paper thus looks into how the parabolic solar cooking system capable of working during the day and night or when there is no radiation can be used to fight the major challenges facing the rural areas in the southern Africa which are deforestation, hunger and poverty among others and how it can be used to develop local industries (Bread, Brownies, Pancake and Post-harvest) in Southern Africa.