Meet Charlot Magayi: Eco-entrepreneur
Charlot Magayi is the Founder and CEO of Mukuru Clean Stoves and 2020 Echoing Green Fellow. Globally, approximately 2.8 billion people have no access to clean cooking and in Kenya Charlot’s home country, only 15% of the population in 2018 had access to clean cooking. To tackle this global problem, Charlot founded Mukuru Clean Stoves (MCS) based in Nairobi, Kenya in 2017. The business manufactures and distributes affordable cookstoves that reduce toxic emissions by 70%, use up to 60% less fuel, and decreases the risk of burns by 40%. This is a female-owned company, the majority of the employees at MCS are women as the senior management team and sales agents are all women and 65% of the production team is women. Charlot’s work has been recognized by several international organizations such as the World Bank’s global SDGs and Her, Global Citizen, and AWIEF. Charlot believes that every household should be toxic smoke-free and has dedicated her skills and knowledge to work towards achieving this goal.
Hi Charlot, thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me and sharing your journey in the energy sector.
How would you describe your career path in the energy sector, and what have been some of your standout moments?
My experience in the industry has been venturesome; it has been a long, challenging but worthwhile journey with quite a few years spent making mistakes, learning from them, and making more. A moment I would describe as a standout was when we finally built a production facility and hired enough talent to increase our capacity.
How have the various awards you have won helped Mukuru Clean Stove grow as a company?
The awards have helped put Mukuru Clean Stoves on the map, validated the work that we do and attracted more partnerships. Some of these awards also provided some much-needed capital that is helping us scale our impact.
MCS is a woman-led organization with 100% of both senior management and sales agents being women and 55% of the production team. Was this an intentional decision you took when you started to be surrounded by women and why?
Yes, Mukuru Clean Stoves was founded to impact the lives of women and girls, we had to ensure that the decision makers represented the intended target beneficiaries. Because women have a better understanding of the pain points, we figured they were best placed to sell the cookstoves and profit from it. Having women as our sales agents not only economically empowers them but also helps to lift their families out of poverty as over 90% of their income is invested in the well being of their families.
Who has been your biggest support system in your entrepreneurship journey? What are some of the obstacles that you have encountered in your journey and how have you overcome this?
Other women in the clean cooking sector have provided me and my business with tremendous support especially getting through the challenges like market entry where a more established competitor already had a presence in, getting access to capital that was really hard to come by in the early days and building a great team as we grow the business.
How has COVID 19 pandemic impacted your work and how have you responded to it as a business? Are there any positives from this pandemic?
The pandemic forced us to rethink our most effective marketing strategy; market demos. We had to come up with new ways to market our stoves without setting up in local markets and demonstrating how our products work while communicating the benefits of clean cooking. One major positive brought along by the pandemic was the increase in demand for clean cookstoves.
Looking to the future, what projects would you like to develop further, and do you have any particular goals or milestones that you would like to reach?
We are currently exploring the possibility of entering new markets in East Africa, more specifically Rwanda.
What are your hopes for moving towards clean cooking for all? What actions do you believe must be adopted by the energy sector to ensure that clean cooking for all is made possible?
For us to attain the goal for universal access to clean cooking, awareness creation and community education on the negative impacts of household air pollution and the benefits of clean cooking have to remain an integral part of the efforts to accelerate the adoption of clean cookstoves and the sector needs to ensure that they provide technical and financial support for local manufacturers and distributors to help us achieve these goals
Lastly, before you go. What advice do you have for young women who also want to start companies addressing energy challenges?
The time to create those companies and enter this sector is now. My advice would be to start now and leverage the knowledge shared by stakeholders like the Clean Cooking Alliance to figure out where the gaps are to help them innovate new solutions.
The Meet the Women in Energy Series features women in the energy sector who are committed to transforming the energy space. This series seeks to inspire other women and to showcase the many talented women working in the sector ranging from entrepreneurs, experts, senior executives, middle managers to young professionals’ and new graduates.
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