Jeffrey Gogo Climate Story

Mr Driver Gezi (62) of Gezi Village under Chief Chipuriro in Guruve, 150km north of Harare, has accomplished what major cities like Harare have failed to do – turn their mountains of polluting garbage into a useful energy source.

He is turning cow dung into biogas energy which in turn provides his home with light and heat. By using biogas, a renewable energy generated by breaking down waste, such as human excreta and animal slung, Mr Gezi has completely eliminated his family’s desperate need for woodfuel, which has been indispensable for cooking and heating among several rural families, and lately even among urban dwellers due to excessive power cuts.

For Mr Gezi, his wife and grandchild, a communal farming family earning not more than US$700 per year mainly from maize production, biogas use has changed their lives in ways words alone cannot sufficiently explain.

“This (biogas) is a brilliant project as it helps save trees,” said Mr Gezi, who has been accustomed to pounding the earth on foot covering distances of up to 10km in search of firewood, usually obtained by cutting down trees, under the dry conditions of Guruve known for its sweltering heat.

“It also means we now have light at night, cooking has been made easy, dishes are easy to clean and the costs we used to incur buying candles and paraffin are now a thing of the past,” he said.

Mr Gezi, whose family is one of the three beneficiaries of a biogas programme being jointly piloted in Guruve by Environment Africa and Progressio, two Harare environment and development-centred civic organisations, could not, however, quantify the financial savings from biogas as he had only used it for less than a month.

But given the rising number of communal and small-scale tobacco farmers in Guruve, who require huge amounts of firewood to cure their crop, and the inherent community needs for the same, trees in the area have been decimated with reckless abandon.

By using cow dung from his small herd of cattle, Mr Gezi is able to save trees and trap other dangerous ozone depleting gases emitted by such waste when decaying.

New hope
In Guruve, biogas digesters have been installed for free for three families in Wards 7, 8 and 22.

Project leader Mr Kudzanai Gwande of Environment Africa said the biogas pilot was being implemented as demonstration to encourage wider community buy-in into the technology.

“This also helps to demystify the myths around gas,” he said.

“At each demonstration plant, a book to record what people say has been opened. Most of those that have visited the demo sites have been pleased and would want to adopt the technology.”

The project is targeting rural households but is only suitable for those with a minimum cattle herd of five, ostensibly critical to amassing the necessary amount of animal waste.

The digester, which is being built at an average cost of US$1 000, is fed with cattle dung and water to produce light and heat for cooking.
And although other animal waste such as chicken or goat or sheep droppings could be used as feedstock for biogas production, rural households seldom have a sufficient number of livestock excreting such small waste at a scale desirable to fire the plant optimally.

Clearly, if the project should roll out early next year as envisaged, many rural families will be streamlined for they neither possess the requisite minimum number of cattle nor the financial clout to set up and maintain a digester. But Progressio field officer, involved in the day-to-day interactions with farmers and operation of the plants, Mr John Chikuni argued that with numerous Guruve farmers venturing into tobacco farming, where earnings are significantly higher, most will be able to afford the costs of installation.

Small-scale tobacco farming has destroyed up to 15 percent of Zimbabwe’s forests and in the absence of sustainable and affordable alternatives, forests in Guruve are at great risk, despite the biogas initiative which attempts to save the same. On the other hand, to minimise costs for interested households, Mr Gwande said Environment Africa was in the process of establishing a revolving fund for that purpose but did not provide further detail.

However, when fully operational, the project was expected to yield several benefits for the Guruve community. Environmental benefits include climate change mitigation through reduced tree cutting and burning of greenhouse gases like methane produced during anaerobic decomposition, said Mr Gwande.

“Socio-economically the women now have more time to do other things at home as they no longer travel long distances to fetch firewood,” he said.

“They use the waste water discharged by the digesters as an organic liquid fertiliser. The households now have light that is being used by the schoolchildren for reading, women to do other chores late into the night and other line projects such as broiler production and having small hatcheries for traditional chickens and guinea fowls.

“Women are now using gas that does not soot the pots and they cook sitting on stools than on the floor. Use of clean energy also reduces the incidences of respiratory diseases infections.”

The energy challenge in Zim
Energy demand in Zimbabwe has more than doubled since independence in 1980 due to population growth and industrialisation and, of course, due to reduction in supplies because of weak investments into the sector.

However, at 53 percent, fuelwood has remained the most dominant source of energy in the national mix, propelling a massive decline in forest resources, which are being lost at a rate of 50 million trees per year.

The massive deforestation rate in Zimbabwe is dangerous and unsustainable, as it feeds into the vicious cycle of climate change.
For energy needs, rural communities, which depend on wood for heating and cooking, have come under serious pressure from tighter Government controls on forests. Yet, except for electrifying a few schools, hospitals and royal residences, Government has failed to adequately respond to the growing energy needs for rural folk at a time of changing climate.

A public solar programme jointly run by Government and the Global Environment Fund in the early 1990s was abandoned due to lack of funding after only a handful of households had been connected. In the 1980s, Government assisted in the establishment of over 100 biogas plants in several villages across rural Zimbabwe, but today, these facilities are either dead or abandoned due to neglect.

Now, through the Rural Electrification Agency, Government is trying to resuscitate some of these projects or start new ones, as the demand for energy, and particularly clean energy options, continue to escalate.

Currently, the Ministry of Energy has revived the projects and over 400 plants have been constructed at homestead level in Hwedza, Sanyati, Chirumanzu, Gutu and Chipinge, according to a featured article on the Ministry of Science and Technology website.

But as things stand, most rural communities remain in a fix. They are confronted by the difficult task of observing forest conservation laws and, in the absence of sustainable alternatives, the need to utilise the same for their energy needs.
God is faithful.

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