Tubeho Neza: Living Well through Clean Cooking in Rural Rwanda 

The daily task of preparing meals is a challenge for Goreth Nyiramwiza and her household of eight. Like most families in Gitwa Village, part of Gishyita Sector in western Rwanda, they rely on firewood to fuel their open-fire cooking. Due to widespread deforestation, however, the wood is difficult to find, and trip to collect it can take up to five hours.

“It’s exhausting,” Nyiramwiza says. “The children help me, often going to fetch firewood four times a week because we run out. Sometimes they miss school or are late because they went to collect firewood.”

The risks of collecting fuel extend beyond lost time. Nyiramwiza worries about her children getting in trouble for gathering wood on land that is not theirs. At times, she says, they have been caught in the forest and arrested.

The simple act of cooking poses dangers as well. Nyiramwiza’s children have been burned by sparks from uncovered firewood, and the smoke from the open fire affects the family’s health daily. Nyiramwiza describes headaches, irritated eyes, and nosebleeds caused by scratching after prolonged exposure.

“If we had a proper stove, it would help us a lot,” she says. “I wouldn’t get eye problems or cough from the smoke. I would be able to cook faster and then help the children with homework.”

For Nyiramwiza and her family, access to clean cooking would be life changing—and soon, they will receive an efficient cookstove.

Open-Fire Cooking: A Widespread Challenge 

Nyiramwiza’s experience reflects the reality for many families across Rwanda. More than 2.3 million rural households rely on traditional three-stone fires for cooking. Firewood remains the primary source of energy, even as forests have been depleted and fuel has become harder to access.

In rural communities, women and girls are responsible for most of the cooking and fuel collection. Time spent gathering firewood often comes at the expense of education, income generation, and participation in community life.

Cooking over open fires also exposes households to high levels of household air pollution. Smoke fills kitchens and living spaces, contributing to the kinds of respiratory illness, eye irritation, burns, and other preventable health problems that Nyiramwiza and her children have experienced.

Despite these risks, alternatives have remained out of reach for many families. Clean cooking technologies require upfront investment that rural households cannot afford.

“At the moment, Rwanda’s rural population faces a challenge of limited resources covering unlimited needs,” says Monica Keza, the country director at DelAgua, an organization that has distributed efficient cookstoves to millions of families. “For a rural household to choose to buy a stove over school fees for their children, or over healthcare, is almost impossible.”

The Tubeho Neza Program 

Tubeho Neza, meaning “live well” in Kinyarwanda, was developed to address these barriers. Implemented by DelAgua Health Rwanda, the program provides high-quality, fuel-efficient improved cookstoves to rural households free of charge.

Since 2012, DelAgua has worked in 27 of Rwanda’s 30 districts, partnering with local authorities and communities to reach households that have been excluded from clean cooking solutions. The program focuses specifically on families who would otherwise be unable to purchase a stove.

“When a household is cooking on a three-stone fire, it’s very unhealthy,” Keza says. “Most of these women have small babies on their back and the smoke gets into the children’s mouth, ears, everywhere.”

The improved cookstoves distributed through the Tubeho Neza program replace traditional three-stone fires. Manufactured in Kenya, the stoves are high performance and robust, designed to work for the women and the reality of their lives. Each improved stove uses 71 percent less firewood and reduces cooking time by roughly half. Household air pollution is significantly reduced from the first day of use.

For rural households that rely on wood fuel, these reductions translate directly into improved health and safety, as well as time saved each day.

Enabling Clean Cooking through Carbon Finance 

The Tubeho Neza program relies entirely on carbon finance for its operations. Through the DelAgua Improved Cookstove Grouped Project (Verra Project 3699) and the DelAguaClean Cooking Grouped Project in Rwanda (Verra Project 4150), registered with Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program, verified reductions in biomass fuel use generate high-quality carbon credits that are sold on the voluntary carbon market.

Revenue from these credits provides funding for the purchase of improved cookstoves as well as other key initiatives: the training and employment of community health workers, household education so families can learn how to use the cookstoves, and long-term monitoring and support to ensure that the cookstoves remain functional and effective.

Without carbon finance, distributing clean cookstoves at this scale—and at no cost to households—would be impossible.

“Carbon finance provides large-scale, long-term funding for a project of this magnitude and is able to transform millions of lives,” Keza explains. “It finances the education part, purchasing the stoves, and all the other things that enable the project to operate.”

This finance allows the Tubeho Neza program to function as a long-term public health and climate intervention, rather than a one-time distribution effort. But the stoves also stand out for their ability to benefit families from their very first use.

“There is no other type of carbon credit that delivers so much immediate impact across multiple health, environmental, educational, and social challenges,” says Keza. “This is because, from the moment a household uses an improved cookstove, they’re reducing the amount of wood required for cooking, and they’re reducing the amount of household air pollution that they’re exposed to. The family’s health starts to improve from the day they use the Tubeho Neza stove.”

The projects also contribute to 11 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), meaning that they have positive impacts on everything from reducing poverty to supporting peace and justice.

Ensuring Integrity through Rigorous Standards 

DelAgua’s projects use Verra’s VM0050 Energy Efficiency and Fuel-Switch Measures in Cookstoves, a comprehensive and robust VCS Program methodology that provides a high-integrity approach to quantifying emission reductions in cookstoves.

When the projects began, DelAgua used an earlier cookstove methodology, VMR0006, but after VM0050 was released in October 2024, they underwent a requantification process. This process enabled DelAgua to update past verification periods and requantify the greenhouse gas emission reductions from those periods in accordance with VM0050, which is now the most advanced cookstove methodology available. VM0050 has been approved by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) under its Core Carbon Principles and is eligible under the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).

Under VM0050, emission reductions are linked directly to household-level stove use. Each stove is registered and tracked, ensuring that credits represent real and sustained reductions in fuel consumption and emissions.

“VM0050 has been developed to incorporate all the latest best practices in measurement and data collection,” Keza says. “At DelAgua, we appreciate the rigor of VM0050, which means assurance around the integrity of cookstove credits and also provides confidence in the sector.”

DelAgua’s partnership with Verra has been central to the program’s development.

“Verra has been very instrumental in bringing DelAgua’s clean cookstove program to life by certifying its carbon emission reductions,” Keza explains. “This enables DelAgua to generate and sell carbon credits, which fund the free distribution of high-quality, high-performance stoves to rural communities.”

The Immediate Impact of a Clean Cookstove 

On August 5, 2025, Goreth Nyiramwiza received her free cookstove. Cooking now requires far less fuel. The first time she used the stove, Nyiramwiza recalls, “I lit just one piece of firewood and the food was ready!”

Not only is her kitchen cleaner and less polluted, but the reduction in fuel collection has also eased the burden on her children.

“The children were happy too, saying, ‘We won’t have to go fetch firewood so often anymore. We won’t miss school or skip homework,'” Nyiramwiza explains.

With the time saved each day, she has been able to focus more on work and planning for the future. She currently lives in a rented house, working both as a casual laborer and a farmer, but she also owns a house that is awaiting a roof. She hopes to move her family to that house soon, once she is able to purchase the roofing materials it requires.

“From now on, I will work both mornings and evenings, hoping to save enough money to buy iron sheets for the roof,” she says. “Now I have a goal to work harder and achieve more.”

Long-Term Change through Clean Cooking 

In Magarama Village, within Ngoma Cell of Gishyita Sector, Josephine Uwamurora has used her Tubeho Neza stove since May 2023. Like Nyiramwiza, Uwamurora and her household of eight previously relied on large quantities of firewood to fuel their cooking.

“Before, I used a traditional stove,” she says. “I would send the children to collect four firewood bundles at a time. It took them at least four hours.”

After switching to the improved stove, fuel use dropped sharply.

“Now I can buy a single log and cook with it for two weeks,” Uwamurora explains. “We split the wood and use just a little at a time.”

The health impacts have been significant, too. “Before, the children were often sick—headaches, eye problems, fevers, and colds—and I was always at the hospital,” she says. “This stove has been very good for us. There’s no ash, no smoke, and it cooks quickly. The children no longer spend their time in the forest and they are no longer often sick.”

The new stove also means that cooking responsibilities are now shared. “It’s not just me who uses it,” Uwamurora says. “My husband also cooks with it because it’s so easy to use.”

The Role of Community Health Workers 

Providing a stove is only one part of the solution, as its long-term impact depends on consistent use and proper maintenance. The Tubeho Neza program was designed with this in mind.

Each stove is tagged with a QR code and tracked digitally. When a household receives a stove, community health workers provide training on how to use and maintain it. Follow-up visits continue twice a year throughout a stove’s crediting period, and households can receive replacement parts if needed.

“Clean cooking is a behavior change,” Keza says. “The education part is critical for the project.” By employing community health workers who live in the same villages as the stove recipients, DelAgua makes sure that consistent support is accessible.

This level of engagement ensures that the stoves remain in use over time while reinforcing health, safety, and time-saving benefits for households.

More than 8,000 community health workers are employed through the Tubeho Neza program, including Catherine Nyiranzabahimana, who has been working with DelAgua since 2014.

“Back then, the main problem people faced was finding firewood,” she recalls. “Firewood was very hard to get, especially before the introduction of the Tubeho Neza stoves.”

Through her work, she has seen clear changes in households. “When we visit families who received the improved stoves, we see how happy they are with them,” she says. “Hygiene has improved a lot. Cooking is now much easier.”

Her role as a community health worker has also generated stable income for her own family.

“With the money I earned, I was able to improve my life,” Nyiranzabahimana says. “I built a house, paid school fees for my children, and improved my household.”

But more than anything, Nyiranzabahimana values the connections she has developed through her work and the trust she has established with the families she helps. “What I love most is that I have built a good relationship with the community,” she says.

Environmental Protection and National Alignment 

DelAgua operates in close partnership with the Rwandan government, aligning the Tubeho Neza program with national priorities on clean cooking, forest protection, and rural development. This collaboration supports safeguards against double counting and ensures that the emission reductions generated through the projects contribute credibly to national and global climate goals.

By reducing demand for firewood, Tubeho Neza helps ease pressure on Rwanda’s forests, where deforestation has long increased the time and risk associated with fuel collection. Improved forest cover also plays a role in stabilizing soils, reducing erosion and mudslides, and strengthening resilience to climate impacts.

In rural areas, the benefits extend well beyond energy access. Philippe Kwitonda, director general of lands, water, and forestry at Rwanda’s Ministry of Environment, emphasizes the importance of time savings for women and girls.

“The DelAgua program is perfectly aligned with national priority, specifically through NST2,” says Kwitonda. NST2, which refers to Rwanda’s second National Strategy for Transformation, is a five-year plan to transform the country through national development strategies, with the aim of achieving sustainable economic growth, prosperity, and a high quality and standard of life.

As Kwitonda explains, DelAgua is contributing to the plan by scaling up the distribution of efficient cookstoves to households. Additionally, DelAgua’s work supports Rwanda’s existing environmental policies, from green growth to climate resilience. “Of course,” he adds, “replacing traditional biomass cooking technology helps in preventing deforestation and other benefits, among others.”

Partnering with the government of Rwanda has been instrumental to the success of the Tubeho Neza program, says Monica Keza.

“They have been a proactive partner, willing to engage on issues as they arise,” she explains. “Over the years we have also developed mutual trust based on the success of the project implementation.”

By linking household-level change with broader development and climate objectives, DelAgua supports Rwanda’s long-term vision for clean energy access and sustainable land use.

Beyond Rwanda: Continuing to Scale 

In its 14 years of operation, DelAgua has effected enormous change across rural Rwanda, from cookstove recipients to community health workers.

“I really love the DelAgua Tubeho Neza project,” says Catherine Nyiranzabahimana, the community health worker. “Its name truly means ‘Let’s Live Well,’ and it’s not just words; it’s reality. DelAgua has changed my life.”

Nyiranzabahimana is one of over 6.8 million people reached by the Tubeho Neza program, but DelAgua’s impact is even broader. The organization oversees the largest clean cooking program of its kind in the world, also operating projects in The Gambia and Sierra Leone.

Together, DelAgua’s programs have provided over 2 million stoves to rural communities and touched more than 9 million lives.

As their flagship Tubeho Neza program demonstrates, well-designed clean cooking programs can deliver durable health, environmental, and social outcomes at scale. And high-integrity carbon finance makes this impact possible.

Verra Perspective

Few interventions change lives as immediately as a clean cookstove. Projects like Del Agua show how climate finance can deliver opportunities and health, while tackling emissions at scale.”

Ian Kuwahara

Director, Energy and Industrial Innovation | Verra

Client Perspective

Impact and integrity lie at the heart of what we do. Our partnership with Verra is integral to this through the rigour and credibility of its methodologies, building market confidence and enabling us to scale. Today our projects are transforming lives and nature across Africa, with over 2 million stoves distributed benefiting 9 million people and setting a global example of how carbon finance can deliver social and environmental transformation at scale.”

Euan McDougal

Chief Executive Officer | DelAgua