Publications & Resources

We gratefully acknowledge the UK Aid-funded Modern Energy Cooking Services Programme for supporting the research that has enabled the writing of this working paper. We would also like to thank the team at the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Research Organisation (STIPRO) who organised the Innovation System History workshop held in Dar es Salaam on 5 February 2020, and we would like to extend our thanks to all those who participated so enthusiastically in the workshop. Although the workshop provided a strong basis upon which we could conduct further research, the depth of that research was achieved thanks to the willingness of those we interviewed to give up their valuable time. We are deeply grateful for this and hope we have reflected the state of the electric cooking socio-technical innovation system satisfactorily. In addition to the work of the STIPRO team in organising the Dar es Salaam workshop, TaTEDO, Anna Clements and Jon Leary provided invaluable assistance for which we are also deeply grateful. And, finally, we would like to thank Meron Tesfamichael and Sandra Pointel for their comments on an earlier draft of this working paper, which have helped us strengthen many of the points we made.

This report presents a gendered analysis of eCook in Tanzania, with the aim of informing the development of a battery-supported electric cooking concept, eCook. It is part of a broader programme of work, designed to identify and investigate the opportunities and challenges that await in high impact markets such as Tanzania.

Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to undertake conception, organization, and management of a productive venture with all attendant risks, while seeking profit as a reward. Entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by innovation and risk-taking, and an essential component of a nation’s ability to succeed in an ever changing and more competitive global marketplace. An entrepreneur is the one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods. This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in response to a perceived opportunity