Baking stoves for Burundi

A few months ago, we had the pleasure of meeting Vital Kwizera. He has big ambitions: he wants to improve the food supply in the villages of Burundi.

The 38-year-old was born and grew up in Africa himself and therefore knows the situation well: there is often hunger in the villages. There are no bakeries there. The bread comes from the cities, if it comes at all. Although, wheat and other plant-based products are grown in the region. The ingredients for bread are therefore available.

Vital Kwizera has therefore set himself the goal of bringing a “bread culture” (as he himself calls it) to the villages of Burundi. He wants to build wood-burning baking stoves and teach the local population how to bake bread. But first he had to acquire the knowledge himself.

He went to Turkey to study agricultural engineering and entomology. He is currently working on his doctorate. At the same time, he worked as a skilled worker in agriculture, including in Germany. There he made contact with the bakery trade, where he learned how to bake bread.

He then took up the large and demanding challenge of designing a baking stove construction that could be implemented as simply as possible with the resources available on site. And that’s where we came in, he asked us for support.

We helped by sharing our knowledge of village baking stoves, giving him an insight into the production of our fireclay bricks and plates and testing the suitability of material from Burundi in our laboratory.

And now he has actually done it!

In August of this year, he built his first baking stove on site and baked delicious wholemeal wheat bread together with the adults and children in the village.

Respect! This lays the foundation for the project.
Many more baking stoves are sure to follow soon in the other villages of Burundi.

We are so happy about Vital Kwizera’s success!