Biomass briquettes in Africa

While backpacking Eastern Africa two summers ago one of the things that stuck out in my mind was walking past the charcoal sellers on the street. Women were lined up for a kilometer to sell a small back bag of charcoal, making less than a couple dollars a day. More than 90% of the population of east Africa uses either charcoal (which requires cutting firewood) or firewood itself as their primary form of fuel for cooking and heating.

It’s a cheap fuel and has been used for centuries. Unfortunately, coupled with the rising populations the demand for the fuel is stripping the forests of Kenya and Tanzania in particular. Women walk miles to scrounge enough wood to cook over and virgin rainforest is cut to be made into charcoal.

Deforestation has become a major problem. Cutting firewood for charcoal has been made illegal in many areas but it has only driven the trade underground. In some of the national parks I saw armed park rangers standing by to intercept illegal firewood gatherers.

There are several NGOs working on this problem trying to find an alternative to making charcoal out of firewood. One solution I saw practiced in Tanzania that has found some success is ARTI (Appropriate Rural Technology Tanzania Institute) group. This non-profit has designed a process to make charcoal briquettes out of waste agricultural bio-mass. Rather than use expensive machinery that must be brought from oversees, this organization has designed a kiln / briquette producer than can be fashioned from old paint cans, an oil drum, and a meat grinder. Straw, leaves, manure, beach refuse, sawdust and other “waste” that was previously burned or buried can all be used as inputs and made into compact charcoal briquettes. This process eliminates the need to cut trees for charcoal and when coupled with high efficiency cooking stoves (that other NGOs are producing) has the potential to drastically reduce deforestation from charcoal production.

What I particularly like about ARTI is that they are using cheap technology that exists in Africa already. Too often I saw other NGOs working in the areas whose projects required equipment which was either prohibitively expensive or came from overseas. Here is the link to their website: http://www.arti-africa.org/charcoal.html

-Mike