NEFSALF Farmers: Making Fuel Out of Waste

Charles Onyoni Onyando--a farmer with NEFSALF (Nairobi and Environs Food Security, Agriculture, and Livestock Forum), picked up several briquettes made out of a mixture of paper, potato and banana peels, dry leaves, and newsprint, which he made at his home as he talked to us. “We have all these resources around us,” he said, “but no one knows how to use them.” 

But Charles does. He collects organic waste from his neighbors, combines it with paper, and shreds it with a crank-powered shredder to form circular briquettes that are longer lasting—and more environmentally friendly—than charcoal.

Mr. Onyando didn’t build the perfect briquette right at first, but learned through a system of trial and error what combination of organic waste and water worked best to create the best burning briquette with the least amount of smoke. Each briquette he makes lasts from six to seven hours and produces the energy equivalent of seven kilowatts of electricity—enough to cook two kilograms of dried beans.

Mr. Onyando is both selling his briquettes and teaching other farmers how to make them. He’s been asked to hold workshops as far away as Cameroon and his project is getting attention from other communities in Kenya. And it’s paying off. It costs him about 400 Kenyan shillings (5.34 USD) to make one 70-80 kilogram bag, or 100-200 briquettes, which he sells for roughly twice what it cost him to make.



 

Mazingira Institute and NEFSALF: Training a New Breed of Farmers

In Westlands, an upper-middle class neighborhood in Nairobi, most residents live behind gates, protecting them from some of the crime that has earned the city the nickname Nairobbery. Behind one of these gates, however, is not a family home, but the Mazingira Institute. Mazingira, which means environment in Swahili, was started in 1978 by Diana Lee-Smith and Davinder Lamba.

Over the last three decades, Mazingira has worked to create awareness about climate change, human rights, and urban agriculture, while also training communities to learn better skills to increase income generation and well-being.

When we met them at Mazingira on Wednesday, they had brought together a group of three agricultural entrepreneurs who received training from Mazingira and Nairobi and Environs Food Security, Agriculture, and Livestock Forum (NEFSALF), a consortium of farmers, policy makers, veterinarians, researchers, and national and international agriculture research institutions, including Urban Harvest and the International Livestock Research Institute. By “tapping into the urban fringe,” says Diana Lee-Smith, NEFSALF is able to help farmers and producers learn not only better farming and production practices, but also add value to their products.

Since NEFSALF first began in 2004, the view of urban agriculture in Nairobi has begun to change. Although at least 30 percent of the Nairobi’s population is raising food in some way, the City Council has failed to realize its importance for urban food security (although a draft policy recognizing urban agriculture is awaiting signature.)

Before NEFSALF began, “farmers didn’t have a voice,” says Kuria Gathuru, a trainer and researcher with Mazingira. Now they do and the City Council is listening. Instead of tearing out garden plots or preventing farmers from raising livestock within the city, the Council has grown more lenient because they better understand what farmers are doing—and its benefits.

And the farmers feel more empowered. NEFSALF is made up of 50 farmers associations, with more than 700 farmers—farmers who are better trained and are sharing their skills with their neighbors, whether it’s making briquettes out of organic waste to replace charcoal or making value-added products out of groundnuts (a peanut-like nut) or bananas. We’ll profile the stories of the farmers we met at Mazingira over the next few days.

Kenya Photo Highlight: Banana Jam

A farmer in Nairobi, Margaret Njeri Ndimu, introduced us to a new favorite: banana jam.

Organic Farming in an Urban Setting

In Nairobi, Litter Bins With a Message

 

Rethinking Turning Thirty

Last month I turned twenty-nine years old.

For most of the world, that’s still considered very young. I still have my whole life ahead of me.

But here in Kenya – where,  according to statistics just released in the Kenya Economic Report 2009, people living in places like Mombasa, located on the Southern coast of the country, average life expectancy is just thirty years.

Across the country the average age is only fifty-five years old and more than half the population is below twenty.

The numbers are attributed to the emergence – and  re-emergence – of diseases  like tuberculosis and malaria, and, of course, HIV/AIDS, which has been estimated to have killed over one million young people in this country in the last decade.

So while many of my friends lament turning the big 3-0, I’m feeling pretty lucky.

Border Jumpers Now Has a Podcast!

You can listen here or on beanpod:

Powered by Podbean.com

Only On Today's News

We might be naïve (and grossly uninformed), but we didn’t realize until we just opened the New York Times website that the United States had a ban on letting HIV-positive people travel or immigrate to the United States. In place for 22 years, the ban was enacted at the height of the AIDS epidemic when fear overruled science. Today, thankfully, some (but by no means all) of the stigma of HIV/AIDS has disappeared.

But the fact that the ban was ever in place is disturbing and confusing, especially as we write this from Nairobi, Kenya, a place where over seven percent of the adult population is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The local newspapers classified ads advertise singles looking for love, who freely—and without shame—announce their HIV positive status.

We are also encouraged on the ground by the growing widespread availability of free condoms, the AIDS awareness/education campaigns, and growing number of clinics and medical facilities for sex workers. For Danielle, it is a remarkable improvement from her last visit to Kenya, when the media didn't report as widely about the disease. Still, the crisis continues to be widespread here--and the effects on farming, on the workforce, and on households is alarming.

We'll continue to share what we see on the ground.

A Message From Kenya: October 30th, 2009

Ethiopia: Our Visit in Pictures

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer