One of the engagement sessions in SESCOM's VICOBA programme this season was with the Mabungo VICOBA group — a 70-member women's savings collective. The session ended with the group collectively committing to transition to eCooking. Hands-on interactive cooking training was scheduled for collection day, when the group will receive their EPCs together and prepare a meal as part of the handover.
The Mabungo case study is a textbook example of how SESCOM's market-based model works in practice:
- Group decision, group commitment. The buying decision happens inside a forum where women already exercise collective financial agency — outside the household hierarchy.
- Group purchasing power. Buying in bulk gets the group below retail pricing without external subsidy.
- Hands-on training on collection day. The first cooking experience is supervised, not solo. Customers leave the session confident that their EPC works for the dishes they actually cook.
- Embedded peer support. When questions arise after collection, every member has 69 other group members and one trained sales agent in the same village.
SESCOM has built relationships with more than 140 VICOBA / SACCOS groups across Tanzania, and women individuals and groups account for 80% of the company's sales-agent network. The Mabungo session reflects a pattern that has now been replicated dozens of times: clean cooking scales fastest when it follows the social structures women already trust.
Hands-on cooking training and Swahili user manuals are part of every collection-day session. After-sales support runs through SESCOM's three regional business support centres in Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, and Dodoma, and through a network of 115+ technicians trained in collaboration with TaTEDO-SESO.