Let me tell you about Charlot Magayi, now in her early 30s, who’s changing lives across Africa. She grew up in Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s biggest slums. Life was hard. Charlot lost both parents by age 10, became a mother at 16, and sold charcoal to survive every day, she breathed toxic smoke from open fires , along with nearly every other family around her.
Then came a day she couldn’t forget, her two year old daughter was badly burned when a charcoal stove tipped over . That moment changed everything. Charlot set out to build a safer way to cook. In 2017, she founded Mukuru Clean Stoves.These aren’t fancy, expensive machines. They’re simple, strong stoves made from recycled metal, powered by processed biomass like leftover wood, charcoal, and sugarcane. For just $10, families get a stove that cuts fuel use in half, with 70 to 90% less smoke than open fire or old cookstoves.
This makes a huge difference. Smoke from cooking is deadly. About 4 million deaths a year come from indoor air pollution. In Kenya alone, around 20,000 people die annually from smoke related illnesses .Charlot’s stoves cut pollution by up to 90% and it’s not just health. It saves time and money. One stove halves fuel cost, saving families about $104 a year. In rural homes, young girls used to spend hours collecting firewood. Now they can study or rest
Plus, Mukuru hires local women as distributors and artisans. They earn commissions often the first real income some families have ever seen .
By 2024, they’ve sold over 400,000 stoves, reaching more than 2 million people. They’ve cut half a million tonnes of CO₂ emissions and made a dent in deforestation. They even received awards like the Earthshot Prize in 2022—and Prince William called Charlot the “Queen of Africa”but Charlot isn’t stopping. She’s using her prize money to expand across Africa. They’ve pushed into Ghana and Nigeria and aim to reach 10 million homes in a decade. She’s working on cleaner fuel stoves and malaria fighting briquettes.
She’s young. She started this in her mid 20's, and now she leads a company that’s transforming lives . She built wealth not just money, but real social wealth. She built health. She built hope and she built opportunity for other women. Charlot took her own story, loss, struggle, love and used it to build something that saves lives, supports women, and fights climate change. That’s more than success. That’s legacy.
So when you think about starting something, always remember, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to care enough to begin and if you build, build with purpose, build for others, you can change millions of lives. Charlot did and she’s just getting started.
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