The Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST) designed a new bread oven that needs only a quarter of the wood used by traditional wood-burning ovens.
Principally designed for institutional use, the new oven can produce as many as four thousand loaves in three hours. As fuel consumption is low, and hence running costs affordable, it provides a good opportunity for baking bread on a commercial basis. And, crucially, it also helps counter the serious deforestation in Rwanda.
By 2004 over 200 ovens had been made and were in use in different parts of the country. Of these, 120 were produced at the KIST workshops, the rest by private operators who were originally trained by KIST.