550 Women in Upper East given Wonderbags

Women from 10 communities in the Upper East Region have been given  free energy-conserving cooking bags known as Wonderbags by Wonderbag Company to help address the issues of deforestation and climate change.

The 550 women are from the Bolgatanga, Zorko, Sumbrungu,  Gowrie,  Bongo, Kongo, Yakote, Zanlerigu, Winkogo and Tongo communities.

In these communities and other communities in the country, women spend time  traveling from home simply to collect enough firewood from the farm, too cook food for their family, and this simple, electricity-free slow cooker called The Wonderbag addresses all of these problems.

Launching the Wonderbag in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, the Director of Skills Training of the Bolgatanga Polytechnic, Mr Yen Nyeya, said the Upper East Region was one of the most degraded regions in the country.

He cited human activities such as charcoal burning, bush burning and indiscriminate felling of trees as some of the challenges facing the region. He said the Wonderbag, which was made with insulated material, conserved heat to be used for cooking and was therefore environmentally friendly.

Use of the bag

Explaining the use of the bag, Mr Nyeya said one was expected to bring the food to boiling point using the conventional method before transferring the food into the Wonderbag which cooks the food within 45 minutes to one hour without using charcoal, fuel wood or Liquefied Petroleum Gas.

He said apart from the technology reducing the amount of fuel wood and charcoal used in cooking, it was smokeless and reduced the labour of women who travelled long distances in search of firewood.

He said the project was sponsored by Wonderbag Company and implemented by Coalition of Good made up of Centre for Skills Training, Northern Patriots for Research and Advocacy and PFIZER, a multinational pharmaceutical company based in the United States of America.

The Operations Manager of the Coalition of Good, Mr Bismark Ayorogo Adongo, said PFIZER had subsidised the Wonderbag which had a manufacturing cost prize of $US50 to GHc20 just to make it affordable for the rural poor.

Empowering rural women

Among the intention of the technology, he said, was to empower rural women economically as they would spend less time looking for fuel wood, as well as have enough time to embark on other activities.

He indicated that one of the advantages of the technology, unlike the conventional method of cooking which kills some food nutrients, was that the Wonderbag method preserved all the nutrients in the food when cooked.

The Sales Manager of Wonderbag Company in charge of Africa, Mr Gareth Viljoen, said the technology was developed in 2007 in South Africa when the country was facing its major power challenges.

He said since its development, Wonderbag had supplied over one million bags across the world and urged people to use it to conserve energy.

The Paramount Chief of the Bongo Traditional Area, Bonaba Baba Salifu Aleeyarum, called on colleague chiefs in the region to facilitate the use of Wonderbag in their communities to help curb desertification which was a major threat to forest in the region.