Saving shea: How a Ugandan woman is turning waste into clean energy

Alebtong, Uganda – When Lucy Everlyn Atim returned location aft six years moving arsenic a kid rights activistic successful South Sudan’s exile settlements, her favourite shea histrion was gone.

Known locally arsenic moyao, the histrion had shaped her childhood. Every morning, she and her friends gathered beneath its branches to devour its sweet, creamy effect earlier walking to school.

Its disappearance was not an isolated loss. Across bluish Uganda, galore much shea trees had been chopped down for charcoal.

“I got concerned,” Atim, present successful her mid-thirties and a clime activist, told Al Jazeera.

“The demolition of shea trees is alarming. These trees request to beryllium protected, but radical besides request an alternate root of fuel.”

Uganda loses an estimated 122,000 hectares of wood each year, mostly to charcoal accumulation and logging. With astir 90 percent of households relying connected charcoal for cooking, indigenous taxon specified arsenic shea and Afzelia africana proceed to disappear.

Research by Makerere University recovered that mature shea histrion populations connected fallow onshore fell from astir 20 trees successful 2008 to betwixt 10 and 15 by 2017.

“There is inactive scant information connected the declining shea histrion colonisation successful bluish Uganda,” Dr Patrick Byakagaba, the Makerere University biology researcher who led the study, told Al Jazeera.

“More needs to beryllium done to find their density, sapling endurance and regeneration.”

Tracking the diminution is difficult, helium said, due to the fact that charcoal producers often uproot full trees, leaving nary stumps down to count.

While moving successful South Sudan, Atim met a pistillate successful Yida making substance briquettes from discarded shea husks.

“I got curious. I knew this was thing that could beryllium replicated backmost home,” she recalled.

In 2023, she founded Moyao Africa Initiative, a societal endeavor that turns shea discarded into substance briquettes, portion helping women gain a surviving from processing shea butter.

The inaugural employs six unit and works with much than 1,200 women organised successful savings groups to cod shea waste, nutrient briquettes and process butter.

“In astir households, women transportation the load of uncovering cooking fuel. By grooming them to marque and merchantability briquettes and shea butter, we’re creating an income portion providing an affordable alternate to charcoal,” she said.

Learning fuel

On a blistery day successful Alebtong, 15 women beryllium connected woven mats attending a grooming league led by Moyao Africa Initiative.

They are chairpersons of savings groups from crossed the district, learning to crook discarded shea husks into cooking fuel.

When the trainer asks astir the process, the women reply astir successful unison: cod the husks, crush them, premix them with clay and cassava flour, mould them, adust them and store them.

A shea briquette moulded into a shot [John Okot/Al Jazeera]

The acquisition soon moves from mentation to practice. Some women lb dried shea husks successful woody mortars portion others excavation up clay soil. Nearby, different radical stirs heavy cassava paste, the binder that holds the substance unneurotic earlier it is pressed into moulds and near to adust successful the sun.

Among them is Catherine Akello, chairperson of the Oteno Moyao Africa Women’s Group successful Abwoc village.

Before joining the initiative, Akello valued lone the shea kernels, which she processed into food for her family. The husks were thrown away.

Now they person go a root of fuel.

“I don’t person to interest astir buying charcoal whenever I privation to navigator due to the fact that I marque my ain briquettes from shea husks,” Akello, a 47-year-old parent of five, told Al Jazeera.

“As a group, we’re besides capable to prevention wealth from the products we sell, and that helps america enactment our families erstwhile emergencies arise,” she said.

Demand is growing, but accumulation remains constricted by the seasonal shea harvest.

To conscionable it, Atim is redeeming to bargain a carboniser, crusher and briquette-making instrumentality costing astir $530. The instrumentality would let the inaugural to process much shea discarded and nutrient briquettes passim the year.

“Our program is to summation shea food accumulation from 600 litres to 6,000 litres. That means much shea husks and, successful turn, much briquettes. It volition assistance america conscionable request adjacent erstwhile earthy materials are scarce,” she said.

Renewable vigor adept Bosco Odyek told Al Jazeera that turning shea husks into briquettes offers a applicable alternate to charcoal by putting discarded worldly to use.

Using a carboniser, helium says, would nutrient cleaner-burning, smokeless briquettes that pain much efficiently.

Moulding briquettes made from shea husks into antithetic shapes [John Okot/Al Jazeera]

Beyond substance production, Moyao Africa Initiative runs biology clubs successful 20 schools crossed Alebtong District and works with the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) to administer histrion seedlings, encouraging communities to reconstruct the landscape.

Paul Mwirichia, a humanitarian and improvement expert, told Al Jazeera that specified initiatives are important but entree to cleanable vigor remains beyond the scope of galore agrarian households.

“We person precise bully policies,” helium said.

“The situation is implementation. Government needs to enactment indigenous organisations similar Atim’s due to the fact that they recognize the problems affecting their communities, and radical spot them to code those challenges.”

For Atim, the enactment is astir redeeming the histrion that shaped her childhood.

The shea histrion is gone, but she hopes turning discarded husks into substance volition mean less trees are chopped down and much women tin gain a surviving from keeping them standing.

“We are leaving nary 1 behind.”