Bread is the staple of most Ethiopian holidays, with most families preferring to make their own large round breads. And the business of supplying those households with special baking ovens, with heaters on both sides, as this thick mass of dough needs to be heated on either end is mushrooming in the city.
The business of supplying this stove is making an impact on the daily bread and livelihood of those that make them so much so that Aynu Abdella expresses amazement how his life has changed for the better over the years. Aynu, 26, has been making injera and bread baking stoves for the past six years. That was when he stopped working as a taxi assistant (woyala) and became an apprentice at a friend’s shop.
“Even when I was an assistant on a taxi, I used to earn a good deal of money; but I did not think of tomorrow and had no vision for my future,” remembers Aynu.
That was over when his friend invited him to join him as an apprentice. Within six months after that he had opened his own business renting a small workshop around Semien Mazegaja, off Dejazmach Belay Zeleke St. In those early days he was making small stoves with one heater, gradually transitioning to stoves with double heater. Then he started making the injera ovens and more recently the bread ovens with heater on the top and bottom. The top cover of the bread stove is also transparent.
When Aynu started the business for himself, he sells three stoves a day and later one oven a month. The stoves are sold better than the ovens as the ovens require special times like holidays to be sold.
“The market for the ovens is seasonal and many come to me when the holidays approach and when they leave their placed buying a condominium house,” Aynu explains.
Aynu uses steel plate bodies for the making of the Injera ovens and the stoves that he makes. But the bread baking ovens need to be made of aluminum to avoid rust. He buys the readymade steel and aluminum plates from Merkato, the largest market place in the country for 600 Br and 1,100 Br, respectively.
In addition to these materials he has to buy sockets for 30 Br, and the switches for 1100 Br each. And the making of one Injera oven costs him 900 Br and the bread oven up to 1,500 Br.
Having started the business with just 700 Br in his pocket, he now proudly speaks as he owns a taxi cab as well as pays, rent for his house and workshop.
Another person in the business Yohannes Engidawork who started the business five years ago, leaving his mother’s home in search of job holding only 50 Br and an old Injera oven, now has one automobile and four shops with his central shop located around Arat Kilo. He started by maintaining old and broken ovens and stoves going door to door. Before he went to the making of the stoves and the ovens, he took short term training in technical schools in electronics and began working with the stoves.
“Now I want to specialize in bread baking stoves which I found interesting in its complication and satisfaction I find from working on it,” he said.
Being in the business for the past five years, Yohannes has managed to buy an automobile for himself and employs 10 workers.
“One bread baking oven takes up to 1,100 Br and is sold for 1,700 Br but they do not have market except for the holidays; the stoves have better market than the ovens,” he said.
Yohannes spends three days to make one bread baking oven and most of his customers are people that come hearing his reputation.
“The market for the bread oven is still to grow and I am spending more time on it to upgrade the quality, especially to improve its electric consumption,” he says.
One young man of 18 whom Fortune met at one such workshop was employed in order to get the experience. A friend who had for a while worked in such workshop is now working in a different area waiting for him to get enough experience so that the two could open a shop together.
The stoves that are displayed at Yohannes’ shops sell for 650 Br if they are double. The single stoves with switches and without switches sell for 250 Br and 350 Br respectively. Injera ovens sell for 1,900 Br if they are with a box for the flour mix to put in and if it has no box, it is sold for 1,400 Br. The bread ovens sell for 1,600 Br.
Although these persons remain to seem happy by the current market they have, they also have a major problem in the market linkage and getting sustainable markets.
“People say that this holiday [the Ethiopian Christmas] is bread holiday; so many buy bread ovens on this holiday than any other time,” says Aynu. “But this market is not sustainable and we might not find market for the following two or three months as there is no place to display our products.”
Aynu has been ordered to make two bread ovens for the holiday and Yohannes three ovens although the latter has already gotten the ovens in hand.
“I have at least three bread ovens in each of my four shops and they will wait for customers until the holiday approaches as our market is seasonal,” says Yohannes.
The same purpose oven that comes from Turkey that the Ethiopian Household and Office Furniture Enterprise (ETHOF) sales is priced 2,700 Br and it can bake from 2.5kg to three kilograms of dough at a time. The oven has two trays, one for the three kilograms dough and the other for the 2.5kg dough which can be exchanged depending on the size of the bread that the baker wants to make.
“The ovens and the stoves that we make are cheaper compared to the imported ones and they are easy to maintain as they are home made,” says Yohannes.
Now he plans to have one big display and selling place for the products he makes especially for the promotion of the bread ovens.
Although the culture of using these machines is yet to grow, the implication seems that the customary way of baking bread being drowned by the smoke of the woods for the fueling of traditional baking steel plates or potteries is changing.
A bakery of bread that sells bread around the Addis Abeba University on the way to Yekatit 12 Preparatory School says that except for the electric consumption, the use of electric equipment is better than the customary way.
“I make at least three breads a day that I supply to the market cutting into pieces. Using the electric ovens saved my time and I have got rid of the smoke that would happen by the wood fuel,” she says.
She sells pieces of breads that she cuts for five Br and she makes at least 30 cuts from one circle bread. She pays 100 Br to 150 Br a month for electricity.
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