Mr Sponheim of the Solar Cooker Archive Wiki contacted me a while back ago, and wanted me to post a profile on their site. We talked over email about solar cooker issues and he was suprised when I told him we’d bought some of our solar cookers from a local NGO in town.

Well, the NGO (which is ONG in French) in question is called Hasken Rana (meaning ‘The Light of the Sun’ in Hausa) and they produce solar oven according to a model given to the organization by a French solar cooker designer. The solar cookers are then sold to the local population at a reduced price. Westerners can buy the solar ovens at the production cost (which is about €55).

A few weeks ago, Renate ordered a number of solar ovens from Hasken Rana, and in the beginning of the week, two freshly painted solar ovens arrived at the office.

They had a few defects and we decided we’d try them out first and then see what adjustments would have to be made.

The whole Hasken Rana team quickly found its way to Eden’s own solar cooker - designed by our director - and they were very impressed by the food that had been cooked.

It turned out that the staff of Hasken Rana only used the solar cookers to bake cakes, so we went through the list of all the different things that we cook in our solar ovens: rice, millet, sorghum, casseroles, omelette’s, bread etc… They were very impressed, and I’ll be keen on hearing about their own successes!