Vedaste Muhirwe, a father of seven in Kajevuba, a village in Rulindo district in the north of Kigali, had until a year ago seen his energy bill rise steadily slowly eating into his family’s income.

In 2011, Mr Muhirwe invested Rwf800,000 ($1,200) in constructing a biogas digester, joining millions of other households who have adopted clean energy.

“I have reduced my fuel expenses by 80 per cent. I used to spend Rwf1,200 ($1.80) on firewood for cooking and another Rwf300 ($0.50) on paraffin or candles daily, which is expensive for me,” said Mr Muhirwe.

His biogas digester is fed by two dairy cows that produce about 40 kilogrammes of cow dung daily, enough to make biogas energy for his cooking and lighting needs. The waste from the biogas unit has helped increase crop yields from his farm.

Rwanda, like Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, is landlocked and has to rely on imported fuel to meet the energy needs of its 10.5 million households. It depends on fossil fuels to run the thermal power plants that produce 50 per cent of the country’s 110 MW of power.

According to the National Bank of Rwanda, the country spent $95.9 million on fuel imports in the first six months of 2010. The figure rose to $140.4 million in the same period in 2011, before peaking at $165.6 million in the first six months of last year.

Biogas is thus becoming a prominent feature of the region’s domestic and industrial energy scene.

In January, Kenya revised its power pricing policy for renewable energy to bring saw biogas suppliers into the national grid. Geothermal prices were raised to attract investors who previously kept away due to low tariffs.

The change in policy is expected to attract new investors in biogas energy. So far, there is no biogas plant that feeds into Kenya’s national grid but the country offers a fixed feed-in-tariff not exceeding US cents seven per kilowatt-hour of biogas generated electricity supplied in bulk to the grid operator.

This tariff applies for 15 years from the day of commissioning of the biogas plant.

Across the region, governments are looking for ways to reduce reliance on electricity from the national grid, which currently does not match demand.

A rise in international oil prices has pushed up prices of kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which millions of households in East Africa use for cooking. Over-reliance on hydropower dams has often led to rationing when the rains fail, and growing demand has stretched the infrastructure of state utility firms.

Biogas, one of the cheapest energy sources, costs an estimated US cents eight per kilowatt hour compared with wind at 8.8 cents, geothermal at 7.0 cents, small hydro at 12 cents, big hydro at 14 cents and solar at 35 cents, according to data provided by Kenya’s Ministry of Energy.

Benefits to many

Apart from the high cost of other energy sources such as charcoal and firewood widely used in urban and rural areas of East Africa, many rural areas do not have electricity connections and even when electricity is available, the cost is prohibitive.

World Bank data shows that in Tanzania, 7.2 million households do not have electricity, followed by 6.2 million in Kenya, 5.5 million in Uganda, 1.7 million in Rwanda and 1.4 million in Burundi.

The East African Community estimates that the region will need to invest $14 billion to meet its electricity needs between 2013 and 2018.

READ: Rush to turn on the lights across the region

The benefits of installing a biogas unit, for Fred Ssemuyaba, a farmer in Kigoogwa village in Wakiso district in Uganda are not only financial but also social.

“Before I got biogas we were using wood for our fuel needs.  Now I no longer have to cut my trees for that purpose.  I had planted some eucalyptus and now I have got biogas, I sell off the eucalyptus to those doing construction.  This is income I had not planned,” Ssemuyaba said.

“Biogas has also helped me eliminate some of the misunderstandings in my home.  I don’t bathe with cold water which was always a cause of friction with my wife,” he said.

Mr Ssemuyaba’s biogas digester is the fixed dome type being promoted by the Africa Biogas Partnership Programme (ABPP) funded and co-ordinated by Hivos, an international development organisation based in the Netherlands, with technical support from SNV Netherlands.

ABPP has been implementing the construction of household biogas units through the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (Kenfap), Tanzania National Biogas Programme (TDBP), Uganda Domestic Biogas Programme (UDBP), and National Domestic Biogas Programme in Rwanda (NDPB) and through similar organisations in Ethiopia, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.

Mr Ssemuyaba said that Heifer International, which works with UDBP, helped him acquire a six cubic metre biogas digester two years ago fed with dung from three cows and two pigs and from this he saves about Ush50,000 ($19) every month, which is what he would have used on charcoal. 

Jean Marc Sika, fund manager at ABPP, which gives farmers a partial reimbursement for installing a biogas unit, said that the demand for biogas units has far exceeded what they have been able to supply in the eight countries they have operated in since 2007.

As at the end of 2012, 6,749 biogas units had been constructed in Kenya, 5,011 in Ethiopia, 4,980 in Tanzania, 3,083 in Uganda, 2,619 in Rwanda, 2,013 in Burkina Faso,  334 in Senegal and 159 in Cameroon and as at the end of January this year, an additional 875 units had been installed in six countries.

“These installations, delivered in 3.75 years, are far beyond what has been constructed in these countries over two decades. Determinants of the quick uptake are a more or less strong dairy sector, vibrant or emerging private sector, long-standing biogas experience and farming techniques in relevant value chains such as coffee or horticulture,” said Mr Sika.

He said that although it is still too early to measure the positive impact of the biogas installations at the macro-level, at the household level the multiple benefits for energy, health and agriculture are already being observed.

ALSO READ: Biogas offers cheaper energy solution

Kenya National Bureau of Statistics data shows that in February this year, the average cost of a four kilogramme tin of charcoal had risen by almost five times to Ksh66.91 ($0.79) from Ksh13.40 ($0.19) in February 2007.

The price of a 13-kilogramme cylinder of LPG gas had risen by 64.19 per cent to Ksh2,643 ($31.10) from Ksh1,609 ($22.90) while the price of a litre of kerosene had risen by 54.58 per cent to Ksh86.78 ($1.02) from Ksh56.14 ($0.80) over the same period of time.

“Biogas has a great effect on the overall health and productivity of the rural woman. The burden of looking for firewood is taken away giving the woman more time for her household as well as the opportunity to engage in other economically productive activities,” said Mr Sika.

He said that a process of mobilising carbon revenues through the ABPP has already started, adding that this will help individual farmers benefit from the subsidy by accessing the biodigesters at a lower cost.

“However, the idea is to use this carbon revenue to partially build the sustainability of these programmes beyond donor funding, thus ensuring that more farmers get access to the technology,” said Mr Sika.

In East Africa, the use of biogas has not been restricted to domestic users only as businesses and large institutions have also turned to it, as well as solar and other alternatives to meet their energy costs.

All 14 prisons under the Rwanda Correctional Services which has over 60,000 inmates are running on biogas fed by both human and cow dung. It is used for lighting and cooking, a development which has drastically reduced the money the prisons spend on firewood.

READ: Renewable biogas to replace firewood in all prison kitchens by 2013

“Before using biogas, we were using 1 billion Rwandan francs ($1.7 million) to buy firewood each year. We have reduced that amount by 85 per cent,” Emmanuel Ndori, director of biogas production in Rwanda’s prisons, told Reuters in 2011.

In 1997, Katani Ltd, a Tanzanian owned company with five sisal estates in Hale, Mwelya, Ngombezi, Magoma and Magunga estates, Korogwe district of Tanga Region with the help of Chinese, German and Tanzanian engineers put up the first commercial size sisal energy plant in the world in the Hale estate.

The 300KW capacity power plant utilises sisal biomass residue, which was previously thrown away as waste, to produce biogas, electricity and organic fertiliser; now the company has plans to replicate the plant in all the Katani sisal estates, each with a 1MW capacity.

“The Hale factory and workers’ houses are self-sufficient. saving about Tsh3.2 million ($1,975) per month if we had to buy electricity from Tanesco,” said Salum Shamte, chief executive officer of Katani Ltd.

Mr Shamte said that the sisal fibre is only two per cent of the sisal plant, so they were producing 98 per cent biomass and throwing it away, causing pollution, while energy usually takes up 42 per cent of the direct cost of the decortication process.

“We are reducing the amount of methane escaping into the air, thus reducing global warming. After extraction of the biogas, the residue is a good fertiliser and while producing electricity, we also generate a large amount of heat used for drying the fibre and other produce,” he said.

Mr Shamte said that four other companies in Tanzania and Kenya are in the process of constructing biogas plants, adding that both countries have the capacity to produce 50MW of electricity, of which 60 per cent can be distributed in nearby villages or added to the national or regional grid.

Sida partners with Makerere

In Uganda, the Swedish government through Sida in collaboration with Makerere University is piloting biogas use for waste management and electricity generation at the Kampala City Abattoir, whose engineering component to be done in three phases, will cost $100,000.

“Electricity generators use fuel to run and gas is also a fuel.  We are doing a few modifications and the gas will run the generator,” said Dr J. Kyambadde, an expert involved in the project, who said that the gas will be used to run a 20KVA generator.

“Part of the process of making this biogas is treatment of waste.  At the end of it all, you have treated and purified effluent that is safe to discharge into the ecosystem,” he said.

Tropical Heat, a snacks and spices manufacturer in Kenya, is considering constructing a bio-power system on its new site in Limuru, while fresh fruits manufacturer and marketer Del Monte in regulatory filings released in October last year disclosed that it was planning to build a five Megawatt bio-power plant.

The electricity plant will be put up on a three acre piece of land within the Del Monte farm, the pineapple grower which stretches from the new Nairobi-Murang’a road in the west, borders Thika River and crosses the Thika-Garissa road.

It said that the plant, which will cost Ksh963.4 million ($11.33 million), will use biogas generated from field residues, waste water and solid factory residues and that it will install a combined heat and power system to produce electricity.

Del Monte said that the biogas output will be used in a dual-fuel boiler to replace oil for the steam production needed at the cannery and in production-free times all biogas is used in the combined heat and power system to produce electricity that will be fed into the national grid.

Mumias Sugar, a stock exchange listed company in Kenya posted Ksh586.37 million ($6.96 million) in sales for the period ended June 2012 up from Ksh462.11 million ($5.14 million) booked for the period ended June 2011 from selling electricity generated from bagasse, a by-product of sugar production, to Kenya Power. 

In Kenya, a four cubic metre unit which requires a farmer to have at least two zero-grazed animals costs between Sh50,000 ($594) and Sh60,000 ($713) while a 12 cubic metre which requires farmers to have seven zero grazed animals will cost between  Sh100,000 ($1,188) and Sh120,000 ($1,425).

Institutions such as North Kinangop Catholic Hospital have since 1998 been using biogas energy produced from effluent discharge that is converted to water that can then be safely discharged into the environment, saving the health facility almost 40 per cent of its energy costs.

Others such as Mangu High School are now producing electricity from human and animal waste that is used to power a machine that pumps water into tanks serving the school’s over 800 students.

Umande Trust has been putting up bio sanitation units in Kibera that convert human waste into biogas while in 2008 the European Union, Swedish International Development and Co-operation Agency and GTZ provided funding for a public toilet with biogas plant and water kiosk at the Naivasha bus parking bay, where the energy produced is used to cook snacks and tea in adjacent cafes.

In Kenya, other organisations that are using biogas are Egerton University, Meru Prison, Tania School, Baraka Agricultural College in Molo, Starehe Girls’ Centre, Tumaini School and Nakuru Boys’ High School.

Uhuru Flowers, in February this year, switched on a 72 Megawatt solar farm in Timau that will provide the company with electricity, reducing power costs by 80 per cent.

By David Mugwe, Kabona Esiara, Emmanuel Mulondo and Mike Mande