Made from fermented teff flour batter and prepared daily in most households, Injera is the primary source of carbohydrates, and therefore the digestible energy in Rema. This is precisely what makes it so important to the local community, and a subject of special interest for a design challenge.   

For this challenge we have divided the Injera cooking processes into three main stages:

   1. Collection and grinding of teff;

   2. Acquiring cooking fuel; and

   3. Injera cooking. 

Upon studying each of these aspects and compiling information we arrived at recommendations to addressing the design challenge. Each section described below includes historical, cultural, and factual evidence that enable us to integrate these three areas and arrive at one holistic solution that might benefit the Rema community.

- Because teff's production is limited to certain high elevations with particular rainfall patterns, it is relatively expensive for the average household. In Rema and in most farming communities in and around the Rift Valley region, most families grow their own grain in addition to wheat, barley or corn which may act as substitutes, to offset the cost of buying from established markets. This forms one part of the responsibilities men have toward their families and their sons mainly aid them. As such there are different varieties of injera in Ethiopia, the red (kay), white (nech) and black (tikur).

- Injera is made first by mixing teff flour with water and fermenting the mixture for 4-5 days. This confers injera with a slightly sour taste. After fermentation, this mixture is baked into large flat pancakes using a clay plate placed over a fire. This process lasts anywhere from one to three hours and results in about 30 injera being produced per session. This traditional method requires about 10kg of firewood per session that must be fed continuously during the cooking process. As detailed by Mike Bess in his report about traditional stoves in Mirte, Ethiopia, the highly volatile nature of the fuel used such as eucalyptus branches often cause a ‘flashback’ that severely burns about 20% of all women during their lives. In recent years, an electric injera cooker has been provided for the residents of Rema. It is based on a monthly payment schedule and owners who request for these have to juggle these costs in addition to their monthly monetary allocation they make to pay for their solar cells.

Currently there exists one predominant method of preparing teff flour in Rema. This process involves grinding teff grains by hand on a grinding stone, a sight common to many households during our stay in Rema. On one hand grinding these grains by hand confers many beneficial characteristics to the final rolls of injera made. Freshly ground teff flour is lighter, more moist and has a peculiar desirable flavor milled flours lack. Grinding these teff grains by hand also gives women some control over what ingredients they could incorporate into teff flour. They could include barley and wheat grains to supplement the teff flour which is cost effective given the relatively high cost of teff grains. Finally hand milled teff flour tends to have a greater nutritional content that commercially milled flour lacks due to pre processing of teff grains which reduces the fiber content.

Despite the many reasons which support producing teff flour via grinding stones it is important to note that this process is time and labor intensive. Continually grinding teff grains could result in repetitive strain injuries for women. In addition the time spent manually grinding these teff grains could be better employed in activities that could generate additional income to increase the family’s income.

As it stands now most households are faced with the decision to either use the commercial electric mill to prepare their teff flour, which may result in a less nutritious meal or stick to manually preparing teff flour using grinding stones, which remains a large part of the tradition associated with preparing injera but has adverse effects on the women who operate them. The design challenge that seeks to facilitate the process of making Teff flour should articulate the current constraints pertaining to teff flour residents of Rema prefer. it should also seek to open up the process of making injera to other individuals in the family to provide women with some free time which could be used for pursuing economic activities. One system we contemplated which could address this challenge was an animal driven mill which could draw upon the resource of ‘animal power’ to facilitate the milling of teff flour on a communal basis. 

In the last couple of decades, the village of Rema has undergone major deforestation due to increased consumption of firewood and clearing of lands for farming purposes. The increasing rate of deforestation in Rema has brought about several foreseeable consequences to the lives of the inhabitants. It has threatened the availability of spring water in the area due to lack of proper water percolation through the soil to the underground, contributed to the erosion of fertile topsoil and thereby reduced soil fertility, and has resulted in increasing depletion of firewood, which is the main fuel used for cooking in the village.

So far, people in Rema have mostly just been relying on firewood for fuel since it used to be greatly abundant throughout the village in the past. Now, with increasing population and with most of the land having been deforested, women and children in Rema have to spend several hours each day and have to travel over large distances to fetch firewood for their household as it is becoming more and more scarce. The village dwellers even use shrubs or leftovers after farming, which just causes more soil erosion. The excessive wood consumption without enough reforestation is endangering the sustained availability of firewood. In addition, the widespread deforestation also poses a greater threat to the livelihoods of the people due to its contribution to soil degradation, which in turn affects the long-term productivity of the farmlands.  Hence, to minimize the environmental impact and improve the living conditions of the people, there is an increasing need to either optimize firewood consumption in Rema through replacement with more efficient technologies or find better alternatives to firewood.

Despite the several problems and concerns surrounding the livelihood of the residents of Rema, there are nonetheless several assets existing in the village that could be taken into consideration for finding viable solutions to tackle these problems. The region has abundant supply of unused male labor as the males currently only work for three months a year and are free for the rest of the year. Even the animal labor is underutilized for most of the year except for the time of agriculture. In terms of energy related assets, the village has abundant supply of solar energy. Although the entire village makes use of the solar energy by using solar powered lighting system, there is currently no provision for the use of solar energy for cooking purposes. One of the reasons for this, however, is that until now, no solar powered cooker, which is suitable for making Injera, has been introduced here.

Besides the abundant supply of solar energy, there is also a large livestock population present in the village. Although the use of cow dung cakes as fuel were prominently observed in other regions of Ethiopia, their use was not apparent particularly in Rema. One of the reasons why people haven’t used it so far could be due to the abundance of firewood in the past. Also, due to the lack of space for individual household, they keep their animals a bit farther down the valley. There could also be, perhaps, some kind of cultural stigma among the people against the use of animal faeces for cooking that is preventing them from using them in lieu of firewood.

Although there is currently no positive signs with regards to the readiness of the people to utilize human waste, the relatively large population of Rema indicates that there is a great potential of using human waste as one of the potential resources for generating energy solutions. The implementation of this, however, would be quite difficult as there is currently no waste management system in Rema, which makes a centralised collection of the waste difficult to establish.

Despite the few barriers that might make it difficult for people in Rema to start using animal and/ human waste, there is a huge potential for developing alternative energy options through their use. This could help minimize the excessive fuelwood consumption and thereby alleviate the problem of deforestation in the long-term. 

The anaerobic fermentation of crop residues, human waste, animal dung, and any other form of organic matter can produce biogas, which mostly comprises of Methane gas that can be used for cooking. In this system, even the waste product, the bio-slurry, could be utilized as an organic manure. The key factors affecting biogas production are temperature and the level of acidity of the feedstock. The best conditions are known to be around 35°C and close to neutral solution. In Ethiopia, there have been ongoing efforts made to promote the use of biogas.

Although it would be difficult to harness biogas at a household level, there is a potential for the biogas generation at a community level in Rema. One of the novel projects that have been initiated in some parts of Ethiopia is the biogas backpack project. This model of a decentralised supply helps tackle the problem of transporting the biogas and thereby makes it readily available to the communities. This project also has a social business model, which helps make it more sustainable and manageable.

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Due to the abundant supply of animal dung in most parts of Ethiopia, many people have been making its use as an alternative fuel source for cooking. For instance, cow dung cakes are one of most common means of using the animal dung as a fuel. There is also a more centralised way of using the animal dung for fuel such as establishments of briquette-making businesses, which not only help meet the energy requirements of the households, but also have the potential of becoming income generating enterprises. Fuel briquettes can be made from various mixtures of waste materials such as plant materials including sawdust, coffee husk, bagasse, cotton stalk, animal dung, solid waste, etc. Bio-briquettes could be better than the direct use of biomass as they are converted to better quality through various preparatory processes that help lower the moisture-content and help give better combustibility.  

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The design challenge pertaining to cooking fuel would be to come up with alternative energy options that could potentially replace or at least minimize the consumption of firewood. The design should incorporate factors such as feasibility, accessibility, fuel efficiency, and sustained availability of the alternative options and also take the constraints and assets into consideration.  Besides, the solution(s) should also consider the health effects of the fuel usage and ensure the improvement of the people’s livelihoods.

Injera requires a quick, fast heat, that is evenly distributed over approximately a  60 cm round ceramic plate. Given those specifications, the Injera needs to be cooked one at a time, which heat coming from all directions in a well distributed manner. This takes up a lot of energy and heat, which is practically wasted once the Injera is taken out of the oven. To cook the next Injera, the oven needs to rebuild that internal heat once again, which is extremely inefficient.  The current cookers produce a lot of smoke, and given that Ethiopians culturally prefer to cook inside their homes, it is extremely unhealthy.

An interesting aspect that we have noticed in Rema is that the making of the Injera is not centralized but rather each household makes its own Injera from scratch. This lack of specialization causes inefficiency that is propagated to increased energy consumption. Given that it was pointed out that the community in Rema is not as tightly knit and cooperative as you would find in other villages, labor division and specialization in the making of the different components of the injera would not only save time, efforts, and energy, but also create the sense of community that the people of Rema seem to need.

Solutions to such issues may not be easy. While creating a centralized unit with efficient injera cookers might sound like an economically viable idea, one still needs to consider the cultural implications of such thing. Is it culturally acceptable for people to buy Injera instead of making it themselves? Would the mass cooking of Injera sever the cultural ties people have with the process of making Injera?

A variety of plants and animals are available, (WHICH?) from which different materials could be obtained. These materials could be used in developing the existing tools and machinery used in making the Injera.

Manpower: Given that the men only work three months out of the 13 (Ethiopian) months, manpower is a factor worth considering. With willing and powerful men, many ideas could come to life and be implemented.

High-school students: although they have great potential and are great with the material they’re learning, they do not get the chance to apply what they learn in real life. Many of them wish for practical implementation of what they learn in their science and workshop classes. This application of knowledge would demonstrate the usefulness of education to their parents, increasing their likeliness to allow the children to remain in school.

Existing solutions to this specific mini challenge:

This has been an ongoing challenge and some people  have already suggested a method to increase efficiency, such as:

http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Bess/Mirte.htm

Theoretically speaking, the best solution for scarcity, is increased efficiency. A more efficient system will give more return for less input, and if that input is limited, an increase in efficiency will give a higher total return for the same amount of limited input. In this sense, we believe and increase in the efficiency of the Injera cooking process would lead to a reduction in the need for firewood, which as has been explained, would have a significant reduction in deforestation which would in turn increase the water retention of the area, increase water availability and soil fertility. It seems, from this thought process, that a reevaluation of the Injera cooking process would act as a catalyst that would aid, if not solve, many other problems present in Rema. Taking on this idea, a solution to the efficiency problem could be tailored to address even more issue as well. One if these issues is that of community cooperation. From our discussions with people from Rema, and historical/anecdotal accounts, it appears that the people of Rema have a relatively low sense of community cooperation. Most community projects and collaboration emanates from either government’s projects or the solar energy foundation.  An ideal solution to injera challenge would then also incorporate a community cooperation aspect that would enable the people of Rema to work together and perhaps realize the power of community projects. Additionally, communal projects many times lead to division of labor and specialization of tasks which has been proven to further increase production efficiency. An final challenge solution should then take  all of these aspects into consideration together with the more specific design challenges pertaining fuel, teff and injera cooking outlined previously in this report. This solution should also take into consideration the cultural and socio-economic situation of Rema both in terms of viability of the solution but also to make sure that this solution will not create any social or cultural clashes that might prove detrimental to the community. Another effect of an increased efficiency in the Injera cooking process will be an increase in available time for the people that take part in its production. In Rema this mainly will pertain children and women. In this respect, given children additional time to participate in school activities is most definitely a plus, however, we have seen that people in Rema won’t necessarily convert free time into economic produce. This is apparent from the fact that most male adults have around 9 free months a year in which they work or produce any economic return. This is another issue altogether that should also be considered when giving