Divine Nabaweesi doesn’t need statistics to tell her that her country suffers from a lack of clean cooking options.

Never mind that Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2019 identified Uganda as among 20 countries worldwide with the largest access deficits for clean cooking, with less than 5 percent of the population using clean fuels and technologies as their primary means of cooking.

Uganda’s clean cooking problem has been all too apparent to Nabaweesi since she was a child. “Growing up in a small village in rural Uganda, I witnessed first-hand the perils of cooking with ‘unclean’ fuels like firewood that African women face daily,” she says.

Among these perils were the negative health effects from exposure to fumes from burning firewood—consequences that disproportionately affect women—and the widespread deforestation of the natural environment Nabaweesi cherished.  

First-hand experience drove Nabaweesi to found Divine Bamboo, a social enterprise with a mission to stop deforestation in Uganda through the promotion of fast-growing local bamboo species to produce clean cooking fuel in the form of bamboo-based briquettes.

“I learned about the numerous uses of bamboo which is indigenous to Uganda and realized that bamboo can be transformed into both charcoal and briquettes that would be an affordable and clean cooking alternative,” she says.

Bamboo is a fast-growing, annually yielding and self-regenerating biomass, making it an ecologically sustainable alternative to tree biomass from natural forests, Nabaweesi explains. Cultivated bamboo can then be processed and converted into briquettes that have a higher calorific value than traditional charcoal and firewood.

Nabaweesi says that Divine Bamboo’s briquettes have been tested and proven to have technically competitive heating properties by the Centre for Research in Energy Efficiency and Conservation. The higher efficiency of bamboo briquettes means Divine Bamboo’s product has the potential to reduce household fuel expenditure by 50 percent compared to traditional charcoal (USD 0.32 per kilogram for bamboo briquettes versus USD 0.64 for charcoal). The briquettes also produce less soot and smoke compared to charcoal and firewood, alleviating negative health and respiratory effects on people.

Since its inception in 2016, Divine Bamboo has become the largest producer of bamboo seedlings in Uganda with a capacity of 400,000 seedlings annually. It has planted approximately 25 hectares of bamboo while working with local farmers and individual tree growers to establish a bamboo briquette value chain that contributes to local economic development.

“We have trained 350 small-scale farmers, mainly women and youth, about the establishment of bamboo plantations and production of bamboo briquettes,” Nabaweesi explains. “We shared knowledge with them on how to grow bamboo as an agro-forestry crop alongside their already existing crops.”

The combination of social, environmental and economic benefits that Divine Bamboo offers through its bamboo briquette value chain was the reason it was recently selected for an Energy Access Booster Award.

Divine Bamboo applied for the award—which offers up to USD 50,000 in financial support as well as strategic business consulting—so that it can reach commercial scale for producing its briquettes. After being selected as one of four award recipients, Nabaweesi says the company will be able to “scale production to four tonnes of briquettes per month by acquiring automated production equipment and hiring additional technical staff.”

By reaching commercial scale with its production capabilities, Divine Bamboo will increase demand for local bamboo, giving farmers new opportunities to supply a sought-after crop, thereby creating jobs. Meanwhile, the farmers’ crops will be converted to a consumer product that ultimately benefits local people as a cheaper and cleaner cooking solution, as well as the environment by curbing deforestation.

Therefore, the Energy Access Booster Award will help Divine Bamboo achieve its five-year goals of reducing charcoal and firewood consumption from unsustainable sources by 20 percent in Kampala, employing at least 300 people directly and indirectly, and training a further 250 people in the entire bamboo briquette value chain.

These will be important steps towards creating new markets for clean fuels and technologies in Uganda, which are needed for approximately 42 million people who currently have no access to clean cooking.  

When it’s lunchtime in Kenya’s schools, a heavy smoke fills the air. Mostly wood fuel and charcoal are used to prepare student meals. This practice comes with high costs for the environment, the health of cooks and students, and it is a financial burden for parents and schools. Using charcoal as a primary local source of fuel has largely contributed to Kenya’s massive deforestation. Once rich forests are now areas of dry land.

A large portion of fuel demand comes from Kenya’s schools. About 90 percent of public schools use firewood for cooking and pay up to USD 20,000 per year for the wood, which makes cooking fuel one of the biggest expenses in schools’ meal budgets.

Launched in October 2016, Acacia Innovations manufactures and distributes non-carbonized briquettes made of sugarcane waste, called Kuni Safi (which means “clean firewood” in Swahili). It distributes these eco-friendly briquettes mainly to schools and small businesses such as bakeries, a market that is often overlooked by other clean fuel providers targeting either large-scale industry or households.

The founder and CEO of Acacia Innovations, Elana Laichena, is an entrepreneur with experience in the renewable energy and clean cooking sector in Kenya and the US. "So far, we are the largest supplier of clean cooking fuels to schools in Kenya, with over 350 school customers in 20 counties," Laichena said. "We have sold over 4,000 tons of Kuni Safi briquettes to date, saving 100,000 trees and impacting over 175,000 school children by providing a smoke-free learning environment and contributing to affordable school meals. We have also created jobs for over 100 Kenyans, and over 50 percent are women." 

Laichena noticed that no one was effectively serving schools and small businesses, which are major consumers of firewood in Kenya. "We estimate these institutions consume over 685,000 tons of firewood and charcoal per year. I decided to start a company focused on providing a cost-saving and eco-friendly cooking solution for schools since there is also a big social benefit of contributing to affordable meals for school children. We started as a distributor in October 2016, and when our demand exceeded supply, we set up our own factory in May 2018."

Kuni Safi briquettes are made of sugarcane fiber, which is abundant in Kenya. For every ton of briquettes, about four cubic meters of agricultural waste is recycled and 25 trees are conserved. These trees left standing will save five tons of CO2 over their lifetime. The briquettes burn nearly smoke-free and almost eliminate the smoke in school kitchens. Cooks no longer suffer from coughs and watery eyes and have a lower risk of pneumonia, lung cancer, heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Although the briquettes can be used with any stove or hot water heater, Acacia Innovations also developed an energy-saving cookstove, especially for schools. The stoves that are manufactured locally are the first portable, institutional cookstoves in Kenya that can be used with non-carbonized briquettes, but also with firewood or charcoal

The company has already won several prizes for its innovative technology, such as the 2018 Start-Up Energy Transition Award and the Women in Energy Kenya Award. With the Energy Access Booster Award, Acacia Innovations will be able to reach even more schools and small businesses. "We are excited to work with the consultants in the Energy Access Booster team to be able to assess our pricing and see if we can better optimize our revenues while still delivering cost savings to our customers", Laichena said. "The money will be important for our company to expand our factory infrastructure and mitigate the economic downturn due to coronavirus."

Community Life Centers can offer a wide range of clinical and medical device training to help improve competencies. Combined with service offerings for maintenance and repair, the centers help ensure an improvement in quality, readiness and responsiveness of the facility, which is so often lacking.

Philips launched Africa's first Community Life Center in GithuraiLang'ata, Kenya aimed at strengthening primary health care and enabling community health development. Other centers have been set up in South Africa, Namibia and DR Congo, with plans to deploy these centers across the African continent.

Find out more about the 2019 Seven for 7 honorees.

As the founder and CEO of Samira Empowerment and Humanitarian Projects (SEHP), she provides critical interventions in the areas of health, education and women’s empowerment. The organization aims to reduce the high rates of maternal and child mortality in the country by distributing birth kits to underprivileged expectant mothers and by providing medical equipment and pharmaceuticals to selected health facilities across Ghana. This is improving the lives of about two million people.

Find out more about the 2019 Seven for 7 honorees.