NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, has about 100 million reasons for looking toward innovative ways to partner and collaborate with social enterprises, development agencies and NGOs.

In 2010, the alliance set a 2020 goal of getting 100 million houseolds to select a clean cookstove, over the all-too-commonplace practice cooking around the world. It’s mostly women and girls who suffer the health effects of cooking over a wood or poorly ventilated stove, including inhaling the smoke emmitted from using dirty sources of fuel a means of preparing a meal.

I caught up with Muthiah at the BoP Summit last month to talk about new modes of thinking around public-private partnerships. She noted that the alliance has achieved about 10 percent of its 100 million goal. Key to reaching that benchmark is the creation of an accepted set of standards for clean cookstove manufacturers around the world. Those standards will not only dictate what constitutes “clean” but would be designed to open the doorway for investors to more confidently support clean cookstove companies, she said.

Muthiah co-led Ecosystem Creation in Base-of-the-Pyramid Markets, one of the nine working groups at the BoP Summit charged with developing a Roadmap for action. She talked about their discussions around creating new networks for lift social enterprises across multiple industry sectors.