Tanzania – Local entrepreneur goes for mass production of biogas from cow-dung

A Tanzanian entrepreneur, Andembwisye Mwakatundu, has come up with an innovative plan to turn hundreds of tons of cow-dung otherwise thrown away by ranches and individuals throughout the country to produce biogas. The sight of men on bicycles carrying firewood and charcoal is a common one along Dar es Salaam’s Nyerere Road towards Kisarawe in Coast Region and throughout Tanzania: It is the human face of deforestation.

The main source of fuel for preparing food, lighting, and keeping their homes warm are standing trees and shrubs, with more than 39 million, or 80 per cent, of Tanzania’s population relying for household cooking fuel alone on firewood and charcoal. Population growth matched with a dwindling supply of fuelwood and the rising cost of kerosene, has resulted in the country’s forest cover being reduced over the last 40 years from 6.3 hectares per capita in 1961 to around .08 hectares in 2009, leaving behind miles of barren land incapable of absorbing water or supporting plant life of agriculture.

As a result, many Tanzanians have been rendered vulnerable to the effects of climate change ranging from unreliable rainfall, unpredictable weather patterns and many regions have been water-starved in the past few years, exacerbating the results of floods, because a lot of greenery disappeared in the drought. Four days of heavy rains triggered a landslide that killed 12 children and eight adults near Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania, in 2009. With less than two per cent of rural populations connected to the electricity grid, Tanzania is in an energy crisis. The Innovation But one man is determined to make a change. Working under the umbrella of Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF), Andembwisye Mwakatundu; founder partner of Chartered Solutions thrives on supporting and assisting Tanzania Private Sector Organisations (PSO’s) to become organisationally and technically competent to sustainably advocate for changes and improvements of the Tanzania Business environments and private sector at large. Mwakatundu is liaising with a number organizations with intent to compliment ongoing national efforts to introduce the use of renewable energy in the company’s ranches and the rural communities around the ranches through the use of cow dung generated from the livestock industry managed by the National Ranching Company (NARCO) and the communities around it. This biogas will be used to supply a number of institutions around the ranches, direct domestic use, and another portion to be converted into electricity for commercial and residential use and any excess power could be sold to the national grid. He said in an interview with The Guardian recently that hundreds of tons of livestock waste across Tanzania generated by cattle went unused every year, adding that for example NARCO, the National Ranching Company Ltd, has 10 ranches, 33,000 animal units, and proximity to around 55 villages with a total population of around 156,900 individuals, who are also engaged in the livestock industry. According to Mwakatundu, NARCO had recognized that, with new innovations in more effective bio-mass and bio-fuels, the hundreds of tons of cow-dung left over on the grazing land was a resource which could make a difference in the livelihoods of those communities close to the ranches as a source of energy and fuel. He said NARCO was now expanding its business model to include the development of centralised biogas to electricity units to draw on the inputs from the ranches, abattoirs, and cow dung generated in the communities. According to him the project is profitable, socially desired, feasible and economically viable. It is expected to attract the following social impacts and that investing in this area will lead to creation of jobs during the construction, commissioning, and operation phases hence contributing to poverty alleviation. The use of biogas will reduce deforestation which contributes to global warming, leads to reduction in rains hence leading to low crops and vegetation growth and eventually reduction in crop and livestock production. Biogas is a cheap energy when compared to other sources because it uses organic matter such as vegetables and animal waste. Biogas turned into electricity will improve the quality of life for communities within and around the ranches. Biogas helps to reduce waste, bacteria and waste odour and clean up the environment. Biogas based electricity could be linked with solar powered electricity as a hybrid system in order to promote decentralized power systems and consequently enhance energy security. Another organization that has benefited from Mwakatundu intervention is dairy sector. He said seasonal changes are challenge continual milk production due to lack of feed supplies, and local producers are limited in their growth due to the lack of adequate processing and distribution mechanisms. TanDairies is an Agro-processing company which has been dealing in the processing, transportation, and distribution of milk and honey since January 2000. The company has recently faced challenges in growth due to lack of sufficient milk to process. The company is now focusing on tackling this problem by promoting milk production in an integrated way with community producers to raise the milk production and availability so as to sustain industrial milk production while increasing the potential for local coastal smallholder milk producers across Rufiji, Mafia, Mkuranga, and Kilwa districts to grow their income generating milk production in a sustainable way. He has helped the company create integrated, sustainable programmes for milk production and poverty reduction by providing small-holder farmers with loans in the form of more-productive dairy breeds, with the insurance of purchasing the milk from the farmers. The loans are then slowly recovered from the payments the farmers receive from their sales to TanDairies, while the farmers slowly acquire complete ownership of the cows. The money recovered from the local producers is then reinvested in the form of new dairy cow purchases and loans. Source-IPP Media