Beneath the Surface: What 30 households in Dar es Salaam taught us about switching to induction cooking
The first time Eda saw an induction stove was at a funeral.
A neighbor was talking about the induction stove she owned, and people wanted to look at it. 鈥淒on鈥檛 worry, let me go get it,鈥� the neighbor said. She went home and came back with the stove and its pots. She told Eda it cooked well and didn鈥檛 use much electricity; Eda was interested. She got a vendor鈥檚 phone number, called it, and eventually an induction stove was delivered to her home.
That story repeats itself, in one form or another, across the dozens of households that 日本av无码鈥檚 User Insights Lab (UIL) visited in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for our latest deep research study. There is a pattern in how people are first introduced to the induction stove: by someone they know, cooking on it, in front of them. This finding is one of many that only become visible when you spend time inside people鈥檚 homes.
Between August 2025 and April 2026, UIL researchers conducted in-person ethnographic visits with 30 households across urban and peri-urban Dar es Salaam, speaking with customers of three induction stove enterprises: BURN/ECOA, Sun King/ATEC, and PositiveCooker. Each household received a 2.5-hour visit. We watched people cook, asked about their week, and noted which meals they cooked over time. Where possible, we also collected data on how often stoves were used, pulling directly from built-in digital meters. The resulting report, Beneath the Surface, tells a complex and layered story about people鈥檚 cooking experiences and preferences.
People like the induction stove
In almost every household we visited, the speed of the stove came up, unprompted. So did safety: the auto-shutoff feature, which kicks in when no pot is present, was mentioned again and again as a reason parents trusted the stove around their children.
鈥淚 enjoy the stove since it鈥檚 safe for children. Even if a child touches it, there鈥檚 no risk of electric shock or anything harmful. That鈥檚 what I really like about it,鈥� Bernadeta told us.
Others valued the stove鈥檚 precise heat control compared with a gas flame, or the fact that the stove is light enough to travel with.
Most people use their stove a lot. Those who don鈥檛 tend to have a specific reason why.
Twenty-five of the 30 households cook over 70% of their meals on their induction stove. For those households that have plateaued below full stove use, the reason is almost never reluctance. Rather, it is due to infrastructure gaps (e.g., not having a conveniently-placed electrical outlet); missing cookware (induction stoves require pots made from specific materials); or an untested assumption someone formed on day one and never had reason to revisit. Doris, for example, still believes long-cooking dishes will damage her stove, even though she cooks nearly everything else on it. In most cases, we encountered a small, specific gap that stands in the way of greater stove use鈥攁nd, often, it could be addressed.
Households are discovering for themselves the stove鈥檚 financial benefits
Juma currently spends around 30,000 shillings a month on electricity, down from 80,000 on charcoal鈥攁 聽saving of 50,000 shillings a month that he arrived at by watching his own bills. Similarly, Doris told us, 鈥淏efore, I used to buy a bag of charcoal for about 100,000 shillings per month but, with the electric stove, I only spend around 36,000 shillings.鈥� Doris wasn鈥檛 given this figure by the company she bought the stove from: she worked it out herself. Both she and Juma now teach their neighbors what they have learned.
The peer network is already doing sales work, for free
In most of the acquisition stories in this study, a friend, relative, or Village Community Bank (VICOBA) member demonstrated the stove before a purchase was made. Godfrey went to a market to buy a bigger charcoal stove and, after seeing a live demonstration of an induction stove, left with one of those instead. He then became an informal ambassador, helping the seller move more than 10 聽stoves at that market.
鈥淚 buy electricity worth 75,000 shillings and use it for everything: fan, lights, and cooking, and it lasts more than a month,鈥� Godfrey told us. 鈥淚f it is saving me money every month and making my mornings faster, why would I not tell people?鈥�
Committed households like Godfrey鈥檚 are already doing a company鈥檚 onboarding and advocacy work for free. Our report鈥檚 clearest recommendation is one of the simplest in the whole study: formalize, even if just moderately, the advocacy work that鈥檚 already happening, instead of building a sales program from scratch.
Customer support failure is invisible on a dashboard, but not to the household living through it
Tunu鈥檚 stove stopped working in July 2025. She called the company鈥檚 support line almost every day for nine months, was passed between numbers, and was on the verge of returning the stove entirely. On a customer service rep鈥檚 dashboard, she looked like a lost customer. In reality,聽 she was calling constantly and cooking on charcoal and gas the whole time, waiting for someone to pick up the phone. When the UIL鈥檚 research team gave her a working contact number during our visit, her stove was reactivated and she was cooking on it again within the day.
Tunu told us, 鈥�Before, they used to call us often to check how the stove was working. Now they have stopped calling. This week, you gave me a contact and I finally reached someone. Before that, I almost decided to return the stove.鈥�
The muscle memory of daily induction use came back immediately: what was missing was a way for the company to see that a customer calling constantly is not a disengaged customer.
Cookware is the single most fixable gap
Eighty-five percent of the households in this study raised cookware as a limitation, in one of four forms: not enough pots to cook a full meal on; pots too large for a small household; not knowing where to buy compatible cookware; or not knowing that compatible pots were required at all until something went wrong. The households that didn鈥檛 raise this issue mostly started out with a fuller set of pots at the point of purchase, which tells its own story: the bundle a household receives on day one sets their starting position for everything that follows, regardless of their motivation or income. Identifying the challenge of insufficient cookware allows companies to act, whether that鈥檚 helping new customers identify compatible pots, providing a list of local vendors, or directly supplying cookware along with stoves.
What this means for the sector
What we heard in these 30 households was enthusiasm for a stove that is fast, clean, safe around children, and precise to cook with鈥攁longside 聽a set of specific, addressable reasons for why that enthusiasm doesn鈥檛 always translate into full daily use. The households who reached full stove adoption did so because something happened鈥攊n the first month, at the point of sale, or through a neighbor鈥攖hat closed a gap the company didn鈥檛 know was there. Our report sets out what those gaps look like and how we recommend closing them, including a first month of proactive customer service, a smarter cookware bundle, and a better-supported peer network.
The full report, including household portraits, our 鈥淩hythm of the Week鈥� usage data, and a full set of recommendations for manufacturers and distributors, is available to download here.
