Refugees reduce conflict, protect forests in Cameroon with new stoves
Seated on a kitchen chair, Adisa Issa, a 50-year-old refugee from Central African Republic (CAR), is cooking soup, her pot balanced on a clay stove fuelled by small briquettes.
It's a change to the open wood fire she normally uses, a change that is helping to ease tensions between refugees and locals over increasingly scarce wood in Mbile village in eastern Cameroon.
Mbile's population of 5,000 swelled to nearly 16,500 between 2012 and 2014, as thousands of refugees fleeing violence in CAR found shelter in the village and its refugee camp, said Halpha Emmanuel, prefect of Kadey department in east Cameroon.
The country hosts nearly 370,000 refugees, 274,000 of them from CAR where conflict spiralled in 2013, driven by ethnic and religious grievances and vying over vast diamond resources.
BBC World Service