Rwandan widows and orphans launch breakthrough waste-to-energy program

Seen from afar, briquettes projects like the one described in the story below, seem like an idea that is ripe for expansion in sub-Saharan Africa’s growing urban centers.

Briquette programs that deliver high quality sustainable, alternative solid biofuels exist in major cities in sub-Saharan Africa, but not nearly at the scale necessary to significantly alleviate pressure on the environment from wood and charcoal production.

There is clearly lots of room for growth of these types of programs that can create jobs, empower women, and delivering environmental benefits to the larger community.

What’s more, in addition to recycling solid organic waste into briquettes, we think that increased efficiency in cookstove combustion and charcoal production can also deliver significant social and environmental results. These two sources of biomass are complementary in the quest for sustainable solid biomass fuel solutions to the energy poor.

Our previous stories on briquette programs in a Tanzanian province, in the capital, Dar es Salaam, in the DRC, and Haiti, have elicited emails from prospective entrepreneurs in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, the Kinshasa, and various other places. These would-be entrepreneurs, thirsty to learn from other people’s experience, see the opportunity to replicate these models around them but lack the technical and financial resources.

By sharing the experiences of groups like COOCEN in Kigali, The Charcoal Project hopes to play a part in expanding social entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa through the spread of sustainable, alternative solid biomass fuels. We hope to be able to provide greater resources in the future for all the men and women interested in starting their own briquette projects.

— The Editors

Eugene Mutara, Reporter  – The New Times –  1 Oct. 2010

Widows’ Biomass Energy Project Going Strong

The garbage collectors-turned-innovators are now producing biomass energy from garbage which they collect from several Kigali homes.

Beatrice Uwimpuhwe, the board chairperson of Cooperative pour la Conservation de l’ Environment (COOCEN), a garbage recycling cooperative, looks back at the long journey, which started way back in 2002 when she and her colleagues started off as cleaners in Kimisagara, a suburb of Kigali City.

Speaking to The New Times yesterday, at her Nyakabanda-based office, Uwimpuhwe said that the cooperative was founded by 45 members, who were either widows or orphans, and were all garbage collectors.

In 2007, tempted by the massive piles of garbage that had accumulated and without a place to discard them to, the partners decided to make good use of the wastes.

“We started as a cleaning association but we later faced a challenge of where to dump the wastes; we decided to find a way of recycling them and to transform them into resourceful product,” Ms Uwimpuhwe said.

“Later we came up with this idea of making briquettes which has given incredible results; so many people who have visited us have been surprised and impressed by this innovation,” she said.

The cooperative started as an association in 2002, but it was not until 2007 that each member contributed Rwf57, 000 (USD 100, €70), totaling to Rwf 2,565,000 (USD4,415 or €3,182) as they took on a new business philosophy.

Their business has now grown to about Rwf 5,760,000 (USD9,760 or €7,037), according to Ms Uwimpundu. The cooperative has also acquired some equipment and is now preparing to compete on the energy market, she said.

Yet, they still collect garbage from three sectors of Rwezamenyo, Kimisagara, and Nyakabanda, as they process it into a rod-like biomass briquette.

The cooperative has already started to compete for big tenders so as to supply their products to such places as prisons. The cooperative now employs 110 members who collect garbage from 3,000 families which are first dried up, later milled and then turned into briquettes.

“This is the cheapest source of energy and we are confident that once the people embrace it, it will go a long way in eradicating the practice of cutting trees,” the group’s leaders said.

The biomass briquette is three times cheaper than charcoal. The Minister of Infrastructure, Vincent Karega, praised the cooperative’s innovation, adding that Rwandans were increasingly using biomass energy.

He said that about 495 families and 20 institutions are now using biomass energy, and that felling trees has declined as a result.

He said that the Government established a credit scheme through Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) as a way of continuing to support innovations that seek to conserve the environment.