The Ghana eCookbook: Exploring Electric Cooking

This edition of the Ghana eCookbook is a publication by the Modern Energy Cooking Services Programme and forms part of its series of eCookbooks. This eCookbook aims to shed light on three particular research questions:

• Can popular Ghanaian foods be cooked using modern energy efficient devices?
• On a dish by dish basis, how much electricity does it consume and how does it compare to primary cooking fuels in urban Ghana (charcoal and LPG)?
• Is it convenient to use electricity for cooking and how does the taste compare?

Currently, only 1% of Ghanaians use electricity as their primary cooking fuel. Few people have an idea of how much it costs to cook typical Ghanaian foods. Our preliminary findings indicate that it can be 2-4 times cheaper to cook using electricity than LPG or charcoal. By exploring the relationship between energy use and cooking we hope this book can inform cooks on how best to take advantage of the opportunity to cook using electricity in Ghana. All the more since Ghana has a high rate of connectivity (87 percent), has entered a period of surplus capacity and has relatively stable provision of electricity in recent years.