Electric cooking in Tanzania: an actor-network map and analysis of a nascent socio-technical innovation system

Electric cooking (e-cooking) has the potential to realise a number of benefits, including but not limited to cleaner household air, lower cooking costs, shorter cooking times, less deforestation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions (if the electricity is generated from renewable energies) and some improved gender-equity outcomes. Furthermore, there is the potential to nurture local production of e-cooking appliances and related technologies that could contribute to the industrialisation ambitions of Global South countries. In short, e-cooking has the potential to contribute to progress in achieving several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). None of these benefits is guaranteed. But the chances of success will be raised, we would argue, by fostering what we call socio-technical innovation systems (defined below) that are centred on relevant e-cooking technologies. Fostering these e-cooking socio-technical innovation systems can in part be achieved by bringing together the socio-technical innovation systems that currently exist around electricity access (e.g. in solar PV in Tanzania) and around clean(er) cooking that, to date, have largely been unconnected. But work will also need to be done to nurture the nexus of these two systems, especially in terms of the social practices specific to e-cooking that may be, to varying degrees, novel inmany contexts at present.

In this paper, we report findings from the first stage of our project, funded by the MECS Programme, in which we characterise the socio-technical innovation system around e-cooking in Tanzania. A sibling paper reports our findings for the e-cooking socio-technical innovation system in Kenya. We mention both papers at this point because they share some common text. Consequently, those who have read the sibling paper may prefer to skip Section 2 in its entirety, as the presentation of the analytical foundations and methodology is practically identical to the text in the other paper, apart from a few details. Otherwise, the text here is mostly specific to e-cooking in Tanzania. In the rest of this introduction, we explain the nature and purpose of our e-cooking socio-technical innovation system characterisation (or ‘map’), define briefly what we mean by the term socio-technical innovation system, argue why it is important to develop a socio- technical innovation system understanding of e-cooking in Tanzania, and preview our main findings. We finish the introduction with an outline description of the paper.