Wednesday March 22, 2023
Workers using machinery to produce coconut shell charcoal briquettes/ Ahmed Toronto/Ergo
A factory set up by three young businessmen in Kismayo is producing clean charcoal made from discarded coconut shells that they hope might revolutionise energy consumption in the southern Somali city.
Selling at $3 a sack compared to $12 for regular wood-based charcoal, the coconut shell fuel is starting to find a market.
The chairman of the new business, Salah Malim Hussein, said they spent three months raising awareness about the new product and are now producing 500 kilograms a day.
“Our sales have really grown in the past three weeks. In a day we sell between 30 to 40 sacks, it’s relatively new in the market and people are still wondering about it. People in Somalia never heard before about a factory producing charcoal,” he said.
The fuel is made of carbonised coconut shells, mixed with charcoal powder, soil and water. Salah believes it could play a leading role in reducing deforestation in the area. They also reuse discarded charcoal powder.
“The charcoal powder is usually discarded in the city. We collect it and recycle it. There has been a lot of charcoal powder discarded in the past 20 years and by collecting it we are contributing to better sanitation in the community,” he said.
Some low-income families have started adopting the new coconut shell charcoal. Sowda Mumin Abdirahman bought her first sack on 28 February.
“This charcoal is better than the old one. This one doesn’t make thick smoke and it lasts longer. If you use it to cook breakfast you can still use it to cook lunch without it going off,” she said.
Sowda runs a small kiosk selling groceries and is happy to be saving money on fuel. Sceptical at first, she has been won over by the price and performance of the new charcoal. She used to spend $36 on three sacks of charcoal for cooking for her family of eight children but now spends just $6 on the coconut-based alternative.
Salah and his two co-founders returned to Kismayo after living for nearly 20 years in Kenya. They invested $7,600 in the start-up in November 2022, including a loan of $3,800 and the rest from their own funds.
They have employed 13 people including three technical experts and pay around 50 other workers $1-$2 a day to collect discarded coconut shells.
Some of the employees are part of a larger group of 500 people trained last year by Jubbaland administration on making charcoal from coconut shells.
The director of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change in Jubbaland, Maslah Mowlid Mohamed, praised the initiative.
“We have been training and encouraging people to undertake such projects so they can protect the environment and give up on wood-based charcoal. The ministry supports these business people, and we will try to educate the public about the benefits of this new charcoal,” he said.