Tanzania's Lake Zone runs on Chabri Energy.
Chabri Energy is a clean cooking company based in Kisesa, Mwanza. Manufacturing the briquettes and the stoves that have replaced charcoal in homes, schools, prisons, and businesses across the Mwanza region. We build what the rest of the country has spent decades arguing about.
Built from a question nobody else was asking.
Chabri Energy started with three concerns and one question.
The concerns: climate change, the lack of employment for the young people Bernard Makachia had spent years working with through his charity, and the cost of clean energy for the families who needed it most.
The question: could one venture address all three at once?
The answer turned out to be both technical and obvious. A fuel made from agricultural and timber waste — abundant, cheap, and already passing through the country's economy as something to be discarded. A stove engineered to extract maximum energy from biomass with almost no smoke. Together, a system that costs less than charcoal, burns cleaner than firewood, and creates real wages along the way — from waste collection to retail distribution.
The first units went out a few years ago. Today, the system has been recognized at the highest level of government, backed by international development partners, and adopted by schools, institutions, and households across the Lake Zone. The thinking behind it has stayed the same: design solutions that fit how people already live, build them locally, and let the work create economic dignity for the communities it depends on.
Made in Mwanza. Built for the country.
Chabri Energy operates from Kisesa, in the Magu District of Mwanza Region. The team includes more than ten staff drawn from young mothers and youth in the surrounding community, with production capacity sufficient to supply the Lake Zone's institutional and household demand. JikoSMART stoves are produced in household and institutional configurations, with custom builds available for kitchens cooking at scale. Both products are designed, manufactured, and distributed entirely within Tanzania.
Vetted by institutions that don't back companies lightly.
In 2025, H.E. President Samia Suluhu Hassan awarded Chabri Energy TZS 50 million at the Africa Energy Summit — recognition of a system already working at scale across the Lake Zone. That recognition sits alongside the institutional partnerships that have funded, advised, and tested our work.
FUNGUO Programme: Active investee of Tanzania's flagship innovation funding programme — implemented by UNDP, co-funded by the European Union and UK Aid.
The Government of Tanzania: Partner in clean energy empowerment programmes deploying KuniSMART and JikoSMART to women across rural Lake Zone communities.
Varem Development AG: Long-term international development partner backing Chabri's growth.
The work continues.
We are scaling production, expanding distribution, and building the partnerships that will carry KuniSMART and JikoSMART beyond the region the Lake Zone. Into kitchens, institutions, and communities across Tanzania. If you are a school administrator, a development partner, a government body, a distributor, or a household ready to make the switch — we are ready to talk.
