Ugandan firm produces alternative clean energy from bamboo

A company in the East African nation of Uganda is using an innovative method to produce clean cooking fuel from bamboos.

Divine Nabaweesi, is the founder and CEO of Divine Bamboo. The company is based in Najjera, in the Buganda Region of Uganda.

The firm uses a process that begins with harvesting dry bamboo of different species like Bambusa Vulgaris. It is dried and then cut into little pieces before being put into a ‘carbonizer’.

Divine and her team hope to produce 100 per cent bamboo briquettes when more farmers join the supply chain. The process begins with harvesting dry bamboo of different species like Bambusa Vulgaris. It is dried and then cut into little pieces before being put into a ‘carbonizer’.

“The carbonizer is where bamboo is burned in a condition without oxygen because if you allow oxygen, you will just have ash in the end. So it is carbonized and then after that you have bamboo charcoal basically,” Nabaweesi told Africanews.com.

“But because we are making bamboo briquettes we then have to crush the bamboo charcoal and mix it with a binder and then it comes out from a machine called an extruder,” she added.

Divine operates one of the largest bamboo nurseries in Uganda, producing at least 200,000 seedlings every year. Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant in the world and according to research a bamboo forest actually absorbs over 30 per cent more carbon dioxide that an equivalent stand of hard wood trees.

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