The Social Impact of Tubeho Neza Program in Rwanda

Over the last years, the Tubeho Neza (live-well program) has been successfully delivering cookstoves and water filters to the poorest segments of the Rwandan population. Recent, population level, randomized controlled trials have shown the extent to which those interventions are effective in preventing diseases associated with poor air and water quality. Due to the use of solid fuel cookstoves and consuming unclean water, that has a high content of pathogens, high prevalence of diseases such as acute respiratory infections (ARIs) and diarrhoea have been the leading causes of premature mortality and diminished quality of life in Rwanda. Those diseases predominantly hit the under-five child population. Adults, nonetheless, also suffer from those diseases. The aggregate effects of those diseases on the population level, significantly constrain the development of the country’s welfare and, in effect, strangle its potential to prosper.

In this study, we investigated and analyzed the effects of the Initiative’s interventions and their impacts on an aggregate macroeconomic level. We treated separately the health outcomes that are related to the use of environment-friendly cookstoves, and those related to the use of water filters. In our analyses, we also made a distinction in between the effects on the under-five years of age child population, and the adult population in the working age and older.