When he was a high school student in the 2000s, Muhudi Matovu’s mother suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which was caused by the smoke she inhaled while using firewood for cooking.
COPD is a lung disease that causes restricted airflow and breathing problems. Though not completely curable, symptoms can improve if one avoids exposure to air pollution.
“This inspired me to study medical laboratory technology so that I could help other people in our area who could potentially suffer from the same disease in the future,” he says.
Upon completion of his studies at Mbarara Institute of Health sciences and Management in 2015, Mr Matovu mooted the idea of making briquettes, which could help wean people off firewood altogether – and help reduce pressure on forests and protect people from respiratory diseases by lowering pollution levels along the way.
Suitable for burning in appliances such as charcoal stoves, a briquette is a compressed block of combustible material used as fuel – an environmentally-friendly biofuel substitute. While some people make briquettes by compressing combustible materials like sawdust or charcoal, Mr Matovu says that he uses agricultural waste to make his briquettes.
By making briquettes, Mr Matovu not only saw an opportunity to help his community conserve the environment and also stay healthy, but the idea also presented a viable business opportunity. He began by making a handful of briquettes that he freely distributed to some of his relatives – and also sold some to people in his home area of Nyamitanga in Mbarara district.
“In the beginning I could make between 100-150 briquettes per month and distribute them to those who wanted them within our village at a small cost. But back then most people were skeptical about using briquettes because these were new to them and they thought they wouldn’t work efficiently. The biggest challenge was changing people’s mindsets.
“But they slowly started embracing them as they got to see how they were energy-efficient and could not emit smoke that was harmful to their health,” he says.
As more and more people picked interest in Mr Matovu’s briquettes, in 2018 he decided to upscale and even started a social enterprise that he named Elsmat Conservation Technologies, which is currently operating out of Mbarara.
Mr Matovu’s concern aimed to provide a “full-scale of energy-saving solutions a well-protect and conserve environment.” Even though briquettes are Elsmat Conservation Technologies’ flagship product, Mr Matovu’s enterprise is also engaged in making energy-saving stoves, fire starter sticks and brooding stoves – and also offers the youth training in briquettes making and solar drier construction.
“As time went on,” he says, “we decided to change our strategy and started targeting people who use firewood for cooking for a very long time – like schools, poultry brooders and restaurants,” he says.
One briquette, Mr Matovu says, can fire a charcoal stove for up to six hours non-stop.
Now from just 100-150 briquettes per month Mr Matovu started with in 2015, today he is able to produce and sell a minimum of 6,000 briquettes per month, which he supplies mostly to parts of western Uganda. He currently supplies 62 restaurants across the country and four schools in Mbarara.
Aside from being environmentally-friendly, Mr Matovu’s clients have also found that using briquettes instead of firewood or charcoal is very much more cost-friendly.
“One school headmaster told me that his school used to spend at least Ush2 million on firewood per term, but now briquettes only cost them Ush980,000 per term,” Mr Matovu said, adding that his annual turnover has also grown to at least Ush70 million.
Murshid Matovu (not related to the former), a poultry brooder in Mbarara, said that he now saves about 25 per cent of the money he used to spend on fuel ever since he turned from using charcoal to briquettes.
As the world grapples with the climate crisis, Mr Matovu encourages the youth to take on initiatives like these because they not only help tackle global warming, but also offer opportunities to make some money.
“Climate change is a collective responsibility and I would encourage the youth to embrace such initiatives because there are opportunities to make money as well,” he says.
The burnt out briquettes, he says, can also be used as fertilizers and for combating smell and reducing matter in pit latrines.
Planting the right trees for absorbing carbon
As Mr Matovu and his Elsmat Conservation Technologies churn out briquettes to discourage the cutting down of trees for firewood and conserve the environment, another initiative just about five kilometres west of Mbarara city has been established to educate the public about which trees are right to plant for environmental conservation and health purposes.
Established in 2021, the Nkore Botanical Park, which is spread across two hectares, also aims to help tree owners make some money along the way.
“We have planted here at least 800 tree species, including herbs and fruits. Here we are cognisant of the fact that if people want to plant trees to save the environment, they also need to plant the right trees, especially fruits that can also give them a sustainable source of income in the long run, as well as medicinal plants that they can use for treating some ailments,” says Abbey Tusiime, who runs the new tree-planting initiative.
These added, long-term financial and health benefits, Mr Tusiime says, restrain people from cutting down the trees later for timbre or charcoal.
The Nkore Botanical Park’s most treasured medicinal plant is the Prunas Africana, which is used for treating prostate. A kilogramme of this tree’s bark goes for at least $500, according to Mr Tusiime.
“Unfortunately, most Ugandans want to plant pine and eucalyptus, and yet these are very poisonous trees to the soil. They suck a lot of water from the ground and also leave the land barren.
“Here we educate people to plant trees that protect the environment, improve their livelihoods and also offer them medicine for treating certain ailments. We want people to protect the environment and also reap lots of financial and health benefits along the way,” Mr Tusiime says.
Away from medicinal plants, the Nkore Botanical Park boasts more than 20 species of bamboo, which have been shown to grow faster and also absorb huge amounts of carbon – more than most trees.
A 2021 study published in the journal Research Gate indicated that bamboo is a potent climate change mitigation alternative because it’s a fast-growing plant and has multifaceted environmental benefits and a range of applications.
“Bamboo offers a sustainable solution for various industries, including construction, agriculture and manufacturing, while simultaneously contributing to carbon sequestration, soil protection and biodiversity protection,” the study said.
That aside, bamboo is a versatile and sustainable grass with many uses, such as such as making furniture, clothes and paper, among many other products. It can also be used for flooring while bamboo shoots are also eaten in some areas, like Bugishu in eastern Uganda. Locally known as Malewa, they are usually dried for preservation.
The Nkore Botanical Park also has a nursery bed for those interested in planting some of tree species available here, but the challenge the establishment is facing right now is that people find its seedlings a bit expensive, Mr Asiimwe says, perhaps which explains why many people are still planting trees like eucalyptus and pine whose seedlings are cheaper and easily accessible.
Yo-waste app
In the capital Kampala, one innovator is making waves not just in Uganda but across the African continent, shaping breakthroughs in climate solutions.
In 2021, Martin Tumusiime sought to solve Kampala’s environmental problems associated with waste management when he invented Yo-Waste, a mobile application that allows households and businesses to request for waste collection pick-up and easily be connected to a hauler through their smartphones.
The first of its kind in Uganda, Mr Tumusiime and his team started developing the app in 2019 when they were still computer science students at Makerere University, but it was not until 2023 that they started marketing it aggressively.
All one has to do is put in a request through the app and haulers bid for the job and the successful one confirms the pick-up. Charges range from just Ush20,000-30,000, depending on the quantity of the garbage.
Kampala generates an estimated 1,500 tonnes of waste ever day, but it’s estimated that only about 40-50 tonnes are collected, leaving the rest lying on roadsides and blocking drainage systems and creating breeding grounds for diseases such as malaria.
Even though Yo-Waste is currently serving slightly over 1,000 households in Kampala, Mr Tumusiime and team hope to increase that number to at least 100,000 households in the next three years. Kampala’s has an estimated 500,000 households.
According to Mr Tumusiime, the waste collected is not all just taken to landfills, but that which is recyclable to taken to recycling plants for more sustainable waste management.
The Uganda Wildlife Education Centre recently set up a waste Management Unit with the aim of educating the public about the opportunities available in waste recycling, and currently there are several recycling plants that are mushrooming in the city. This is also offering astute entrepreneurs an opportunity to make some money whilst conserving the environment.
Aside from waste collection, the app can also be used for other services, such as such ride-hailing and buying goods on e-commerce platforms.
Perhaps it’s because of its efficiency and multipurpose nature that Mr Tumusiime has this year been selected among the four finalists competing for the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which comes with a Ush235 million cash prize for the winner and Ush70 million for each of the other finalists.
The Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation was founded by the United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Engineering and is the biggest and most prestigious on the continent.
Mitigating the impact of construction
The construction industry is one of the biggest contributors of global carbon emissions that drive climate change, according to the latest statistics from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).
The production and use of building materials such as cement, steel and others account for a staggering 37 per cent of global carbon emissions – according to Unep’s 2023 report titled Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future.
This is a significant carbon footprint by a single sector, and the Unep report said that while the sector’s progress in reducing carbon emissions has been historically centered around reducing emissions stemming from heating, cooling, and lighting, “solutions to mitigate the buildings “embodied” carbon emissions – originating from the design, production, and deployment of materials such as cement, steel, and aluminum – have lagged.”
Unep’s report said that there was need to establish innovative cooperation models to decarbonize building materials if the world is to achieve its net zero target by 2050 – and some Ugandan stakeholders in the built environment sector are already heeding this call.
In 2020, Isa Kamanzire started SmartFundi, a social enterprise located in Mbarara, western Uganda, with the aim of addressing the construction industry’s staggering carbon footprint whilst “creating pathways to homeownership by helping low-income people escape rental poverty through the construction of low-cost, sustainable and climate-smart homes.”
“When I was growing up, I saw how my mother struggled to pay rent in the outskirts of Mbarara. So, when a Kenyan friend of mine introduced me to interlocking bricks, I saw this as an opportunity to build a low-cost house for my mother, which I did,” he says.
After constructing his mother’s house, Mr Kamanzire also saw more opportunities in using interlocking bricks.
“I realised that I could start a construction business that targeted low-income earners and also help save the environment along the way. Our bricks are not burned, which saves on the number of trees that would have been cut down. Using these bricks can reduce on the construction industry’s carbon footprint by around 70 per cent because cement is eliminated during construction,” he says.
Its name says it all: an interlocking brick simply locks itself with other bricks, and it’s these interlocks that bond them together during construction. No cement is required.
The SmartFundi initiative uses interlocking and stabilized soil blocks that are made from waste materials – some sourced from pit latrines –which saves up to 30 per cent on construction costs when compared with traditional materials, Mr Kamanzire says.
“These bricks are dry-stacked, requiring less water and enabling faster and cheaper construction,” he says.
Mr Kamanzire says there are now about five organisations in Uganda that are involved in this technology, and that the biggest challenge they are facing is that most Ugandans cannot afford even these cheap houses because the majority of them are low-income earners.
“We intend to partner with financial institutions so that we come up with a model whereby people can pay for the construction of the houses in installments,” he said.
Meanwhile, to help promote the use of interlocking bricks for construction, Mr Kamanzire and his team went on to start a training facility from where they train the youth in climate-smart construction and production of building materials – and up to 123 youth and women have so far been trained under the SmartFundi Academy, Mr Kamanzire says.
