Today we inaugurate SPOTLIGHT, a new regular series that focuses on social entrepreneurs on the frontlines of the battle to deliver cost-efficient, quality, and sustainable energy solutions to consumers and small businesses in sub-Saharan Africa.
Our Spotlight today is on Raising Gabdho Foundation, a Uganda-based non-profit with robust charcoal briquette sales in Kampala. But Raising Gabdho is also in intent to making sure the most vulnerable refugee populations in the country also have access to better, more sustainable solid biomass fuel. We interviewed Raising Gabdho founder Sarah Basemera, and here’s what she told us.
“What keeps me up at night is worrying about poor families. Families that once worried only about what food to cook for dinner must now also worry about how they will afford the fuel to cook the meal.”
Sarah Basemera
Team Leader & Founder of Raising Gabdho Foundation
Sarah Basemera was in her 20s when she decided to quit her senior position at a petroleum company in the Uganda’s booming oil sector. Sarah wanted to do something more fulfilling with the rest of her life, so she founded Raising Gabdho Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to supporting and protecting refugee women – girls, especially – living in settlements in Uganda. Lack of access to affordable cooking fuel is a major problem for refugee living in settlements, so Sarah decided that providing fuel for refugees was an important mission.
“Gabdho” is the Somali word for “girls’’ but the word also conveys the spirit of the entire refugee community. When we were looking to name the organization, we wanted to have a name that would represent us and one that would represent the refugee community. We struggled with many words until we landed on “Raising Gabdho.” We agreed that “Raising” would represent the (Ugandan) host community, while Gabdho would represent the refugee community. The refugee girls suggested that we add the word “foundation” because “foundations” are good and they help people, thus Raising Gabdho Foundation. I did not realize that the name would actually hinder us as a business with is why we later founded “Zeed Energy,” We still chose Zeed (or “Zee” in the US) to represent the “Z generation” which was majority of the people we worked with. The Z Generation will also be the ones facing the high cost of energy in the future. This helps keep our minds focused on the design solutions that can best meet their needs.
Sarah Basemera
Team Leader & Founder of Raising Gabdho Foundation
Sarah spent most of 2015 at an urban refugee center near her house in Kampala. In 2016, thanks to a training conducted by HANDS, (a community-based, creative solutions workshop), a $2,500USD grant from UNHCR and a YouTube video, Sarah was able to start a small operation teaching refugees how to make char briquettes (“fireballs”) using discarded charcoal dust collected from a nearby charcoal market. Raising Gabdho’s goal was to teach women and girls how to make the fuel they needed for their daily cooking needs and, if possible, sell any excess briquette production to their neighbors as a way to earn a modest income.
The initial technique proved insufficient for Raising Gabdho’s needs: it was too laborious and yielded only very modest results. “I was convinced there had to be a better way of doing this,” Sarah says. After asking around, she discovered that large honeycomb briquettes would work better for the needs of the participants and could open up a market opportunity. Today, Raising Gabdho employs 13 people and sells close to 60,000 kilograms of honeycomb briquettes. Sarah says sales are projected to reach 100,000kgs by the end of the year once an automated plant purchased in China is up and running.
“Our solution in Kampala was the right solution, but it the wrong location, which is why we picked Bidibidi.”
Despite Raising Gabdho’s success, Sarah remains focused on helping the most impoverished people in the country. Sarah visited every refugee settlement in the country and eventually settled on Bidibidi, a sprawling, remote refugee settlement in northwestern Uganda with more than a 200,000 refugees, all of whom depend on wood energy for their cooking fuel. But Bidibidi is rapidly exhausting the wood supply in the surrounding countryside. In fact, according to Sarah’s survey, a plastic bag of charcoal, which is enough for a meal, rose 100% between the November 2016 and December 2017, going from $2 to $4 USD a sack.
“We picked Bidibidi because it was the settlement with the least support from alternative energy service providers. Most of them want to work in more accessible settlements so that they can go home at night,” Sarah explains. “We picked Bidibidi because it was the largest and the most likely to face long-term fuel deficit.” Raising Gabdho is presently supplying about 250 households with fuel but hopes to supply a lot more.
Securing access to affordable woody biomass and char dust for briquette-making in Bidibidi is not enough.
The bigger challenge is building a financially self-sustaining business in a refugee settlement where the inhabitants lack money and income-generating opportunities.
As Sarah sees it, one possible solution involves getting the whole refugee community to participate in the entire value chain. “Some people will be involved in tree-planting for energy, others in collecting any available discarded biomass. Others will be involved in ensuring there is sufficient water available for the production of briquettes. And still others will be involved in generating electricity so that the production of briquettes can be automated but also to ensure there is enough energy available for households and other needs.”
Another solution involves teaching refugee households to consume less fuel. This means instructing families on how to build more energy efficient stoves using mud and grass. To further reduce fuel consumption, Raising Gabdho is experimenting using a special insulated bags that complete the cooking process without using additional charcoal fuel.
In the end, Raising Gabdho is finding itself more in the role of conductor — ensuring that the entire orchestra (with some musicians yet to be identified) – are playing in harmony.
The reality is that the energy crisis in Bidibidi is not getting better and Raising Gabdho is one of only a few outfits providing fuel for refugees with the help of donor agencies. We asked Sarah what she felt she need most to scale up and succeed in its mission in Kampala and Bidibidi?
“We need to do a better job strengthening our organizational structure,” Sarah says. “We need to package ourselves better to donors, we need to show donors that their investment is safe with us and will deliver value.”
Sarah has already created a successful social enterprise in Kampala but whether Raising Gabdho succeeds in Bidibidi remains to be seen.
Either way, Raising Gabdho is a prime example of the types of organizations The Charcoal Project wishes to support. Sarah was a participant in the 2018 Advancing Sustainable Charcoal Enterprises at Scale Convening (AScHES), organized by The Charcoal Project and MIT D-Lab. By providing business and technical support, TCP is helping organizations such as Sarah’s, reach a size and scale that makes them financial sustainable. With a more professionalized structure and business model, Sarah can have much greater impact providing fuel for refugees at BidiBidi and the domestic market in Kampala.
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Madam Sarah, am so pleased and grateful to have worked with you and will always be indebted to you.
Ur heart is as white as snow.
I thank God for being lucky to work.
Ur a mentor, teacher and above all, u give everything wholeheartedly.