An Irish man is the General Manager of a company that is set to save over $1.4 billion for Kenyan families, along with 123 million trees, over the next decade.
Eoin Flinn, who grew up in Croom Co. Limerick, has been living in Kenya and working for the company ‘Burn’ since it began three years ago.
Burn developed an improved version of a quick stove called a Jikokoa, which provides locals with an affordable and clean method of household cooking.
The use of a Jikokoa stove has a profound impact on both the consumer’s health and the environment.
Cooking is carried out a higher temperature and the amount of charcoal required when cooking has been almost halved.
This will have greatly impact the number of trees that are being cut down, as the burning of wood and charcoal is responsible for more than half of all deforestation across Sub-Saharan Africa.
This will also result in a 65% reduction of smoke and carbon monoxide, which is expected to a greatly reduce the 680,000 African lives that are lost annually, from smoke inhalation while cooking.
Eoin, who spent his first three years of secondary education at Ard Scoil Rís in Limerick City, graduated from UCD in 2004 with a degree in Electronic Engineering.
After three years working in China he spent two years travelling the world with his wife Megan before settling in Nairobi.
Despite arriving with the equivalent of $2,200 in their pockets, after a lot of hard work, and three separate grants worth a total of $720,000, Burn was soon up and running.
The stove is now for sale in all of the main supermarkets across Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and The Congo.
Every stove is manufactured in Kenya, at the company’s 18,000 sq ft factory and Eoin revealed that: “everything is made from raw materials and a stove is produced every minute.”
“People are incredulous about the fact that it can be cheaper to manufacturer in Africa.”
Despite this, Eoin does admit that while it may have been less expensive to manufacturer the stoves in Kenya, it was not without its challenges.
“I say it’s cheaper but harder. We literally had four walls to begin with. No electricity, no ventilation, no plumbing. We had to pretty much scour the country to find what we needed.”
When they started three years ago, Eoin was the General Manager of a staff of four.
Today there are a total of 100 employees and Burn plans to expand by setting up sales offices in six neighbouring countries, and building another factory in West Africa.
When asked does he see himself still living there in five years, Eoin admitted that he was very happy and settled in Nairobi.
“Kenya as a whole is so beautiful. I’m very open minded about the future but I’ve been her for three years now and I’m very happy. Our first baby girl was born here six months ago and we just love the quality of life here.”