I was invited to the Green Charcoal project when the team at BSU,
a capacity building programme housed in the Faculty of Education and Humanities, looked at the need of having some agricultural expertise in that very project. I identified three other people from the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment: Dr. Louis Labeja (the head of the Department of Environment), Dr. Collins Okello (the Dean, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment) and Irene Akite, a PhD student in the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment.
We held a meeting with the BSU team. They immediately asked us to take Professor Michael Whyte (who is Prof Whyte?) to a guided tour of sites that were already producing green charcoal. We went and joined Michael in Kampala. We had the opportunity to look at three sites in Kampala. We expected to look at another site in Mbale but the person there was not willing to open up.
That is when we had to go straight to Soroti. We were warmly welcomed by the production of (name of host organization) which later revealed to us that it started as a women group with particular interests then later on grew and started to produce green charcoal. They then went into marketing and later on started to produce other products including energy saving stoves. They went up to the point of packaging and branding their products.
They told us they were able to sell their products in Soroti and a number of districts nearby including Moroto and Katakwi. From what we saw in Soroti we got more interested. We even bought some briquettes and tried them at our homes. When we compared the two, the briquettes and black charcoal, the briquettes were more user friendly. They were much cleaner, produced sufficient heat and the cost was comparatively cheaper. You only needed to put a few briquettes in your energy saving stove to cook food that would otherwise not get ready if used the same amount of ordinary charcoal.
We think that if this idea is passed on to the local communities, and they get to learn, then that could be a very good option for adoption by the local community.
My main interest in this area is to save our environment. When I look at the number of lorries, every day passing, full of charcoal, going to Kampala and other areas, then I go on to see the number of trees that are being cut from the villages, in order to produce charcoal, I really see that we are headed for disaster in relation to destruction of the forests.
If we could come up with an alternative source of energy - where we use agricultural waste, such as cassava peelings, banana peelings, ground nut husks, rice husks, and maize cobs; those agricultural wastes that are usually piled in unrecommended areas in urban settings, and they become a burden - we shall be contributing towards two key things: One, helping to clean up the towns by collecting the wastes and converting them into a usable form.; two, instead of people going to cut trees to make charcoal, they will be getting their charcoal from agricultural waste.
And then, when you compare then amount of smoke produced from the briquettes vis-à-vis the charcoal from wood, then you see that our mothers suffer a lot in their kitchen with the smoke produced from ordinary charcoal. So, this innovation is going to take us a long way towards improving the health of our people. What I have seen in our Ugandan situation is that many people come up with innovations but these innovations are not promoted but die with their innovators. We need to promote this innovation by selling the idea to people, through demonstrating to them the new technology, so that the local person is able to locally produce these briquettes from within their communities. That will lower the costs.
The cost of briquettes in the villages, currently, is high because of scarcity. The briquettes are not there. It is looked at as something new. If we increase production, I am very sure the cost of briquettes will go down and different people will use them. People are going to appreciate, that I am very sure of. What we saw in Soroti and what the women there told us indicates that this can be a very successful innovation. They even asked to partner with us so that we can spread the technology in Gulu. Can you imagine, from Soroti they could get contracts for training and supply of briquettes to refugees in places as far as Adjumani, as far as Palabek! The influx of refugees has worsened the deforestation problem there. They have cut all the trees. There is no source of fuel for cooking. So, that is the kind of demand. We shouldn't wait until all the trees are cut down so that the briquettes become useful. We should be able to make use of the briquettes now in order to save our trees.
The immediate shortcoming of the briquettes is the effort, the energy that is required to spread the knowledge to the local communities so that it is absorbed and taken as a viable alternative source of energy. Otherwise, in relation to functionality, the briquette, compared to our local charcoal, has no shortcoming. We interacted with the people who were selling briquettes in Sroti and they told us that some of the local women complained about the briquettes, that they quickly destroy the source pan because of excessive heat, but that can be easily controlled by not putting too much of it.
Another challenge will be, many of our people, once they are cooking beans using ordinary charcoal, they know that will take one or two hours. But with the briquettes, it will take you a few minutes, less than 30 minutes, according to testimonies from users. It cooks quicker so you need to be around it. You don't need to leave and then go and do something else for a long period and come back later to inspect. Many times you may get your food burnt. If people are trained on how to use appropriately, the briquettes, such kinds of challenges will be no more. So, the mindset of the people has to slowly change so that this technology becomes useful to them.
My main interest in this research is to come out with a simple technology of machines that are used for making briquettes, which technology can easily be rolled out to the local community so that they can produce their own briquettes and reduce the cost of production, therefore pulling away people from the use of charcoal from trees to the use of charcoal from agricultural waste.
To achieve that, the study has to involve a number of sectors. We have to involve the business sector, to see the business viability; we have to involve the cultural sector, to see how we can convince people to turn them from their cultural practices to the new innovation and thirdly, science: how can this innovation be scientifically backed to save our environment? Dr. Collins Okello will tell you we have gone to the point of assessing the amount of energy that is produced when using briquettes compared to the amount of energy produced when using ordinary charcoal.
This study provides opportunities for students. We use it for teaching them. Some of our master students, PhD students, can take up some of those aspects for research. Their findings will be published and will be an addition to the body of knowledge. I think our main challenge now is the financing. We are very interested in promoting this technology. We are looking for finances to help us move on with the project. Because now what we are producing in our labs is basically the trial machines, using money that has been provided to us by BSU, which is able to produce, probably a single set of each machine. But we are talking about rolling out this technology to the local communities. We are trying to put our project ideas together, trying to look for money here and there, so that we can we can deliver these technologies to the communities.
Francis Atube is the Head of Department, Science Education (Agriculture), Faculty of Education and Humanities, Gulu University
