Dar es Salaam. More Tanzanians will benefit from accessing
initial loans to purchase cooking gas facilities after KopaGas limited received
a grant from US organisation, Acumen, to expand the services.
KopaGas Company managing director Andron Mendez told The
Citizen that currently more than 500 customers have benefited from the
programme, but the target is to reach 200,000 customers in Dar es Salaam and
Zanzibar by 2021.
According to Mr Mendez, the main objective of the programme
is to empower people to acquire cooking gas facilities.
He said lack of empowerment had been identified as a
challenge that was denying people the use of gas as the main source of cooking
energy.
It is also targeting to discourage the use of charcoal,
mainly in Dar es Salaam city where nine out of ten people use it as their main
source of cooking energy, which fuels deforestation.
Mr Mendez said Acumen had agreed to offer another Sh20
billion soon after completion of the current Sh5 billion project targeting to
connect 50,000 homes with cooking gas facilities by March next year.
“We came up with this simple and affordable technology to
help customers to buy gas depending on their use,” he said.
He said the company would start receiving loan payments once
customers started buying gas. He added that the goal was to help people to
purchase gas facilities, including cylinders.
The technology was designed in 2014 and came into practice
in 2017 after the designer realised that some people preferred to use gas for
domestic purposes but lacked initial capital to buy facilities.
Source: The Citizen