The Kenya Seeds of Change Extension Program
The ‘Transporter’ solution.
Integrating small and medium scale sustainable indigenous energy woodlots into the seed-to-ash cycle that currently provides for over 80% of Kenya’s household energy demands.
Introduction
As predicted over 30 years ago by many different public and private institutions, the national demand for wood fuels has unsustainably risen to new and dangerous peaks alongside rapid population growth. With a national replanting regime that has not sufficed to replace the harvesting rates, the country’s forest cover has become dangerously depleted.
Because of this, the charcoal trade in particular, has come under hostile scrutiny from all sectors. Since the initial bans during the Kenyatta regime, the general policy towards charcoal has been very akin to the proverb of ignoring a great, white (well black) elephant in small room. Today the charcoal sector is a 30 billion shilling plus, untaxed, unregulated, informal energy industry that directly supplies the daily household cooking energy for over 80% of the population.
Project Rational
The basis of this project will be to get the seeds of high yield/quick maturing tree species into the hands of the charcoal producers, at the production point. Replanting will then be a relatively easy, efficient, high yielding endeavor. There is a lot to gain and very little to lose from this. A rapidly renewable household energy resource network will be inflated through the current producer-to-consumer cycle by piggybacking the existing market infrastructure.
The main dictator of charcoal prices from the consumer to the producer is the middleman. Of course along with that power, the middleman/transporter has more to lose than any other player in the charcoal trade, if (when, at current projections) the bottom of the charcoal industry falls through due to lack or inaccessibility of raw materials (acacia trees).
That stated, the middleman is the one who really has the strongest interest in pushing re-afforestation levels in drylands to new heights. (Simply for the noble sake of his/her future business interests)
Strategy
The core approach to this project will be to;
a)Establish a network of middlemen who are heavily involved in the charcoal trade that privately own trucks/lorrys who are willing and able to engage in future resource security projects.
b)Train the driver/loader crew to disseminate and market the relevant information to the landowners where charcoal production is taking place about the ease of acquiring and planting seeds for future energy forests.
c)Sell certified tree seed packets with planting instructions to the fleet operators who in turn will retail woodfuel tree seeds of the acacia variety at the source of charcoal collection (the landowners) for planting. (one bag of charcoal is worth about 400 seeds)
d)KSoC will provide efficient charcoaling training courses to registered landowners so as to provide the highest level of value addition to their current and future woodfuel resource base.
Projected Outcome
A win-win situation for all;
a)Kenya Seeds of Change is provided with at least a few lifetimes of tree seed sales. (There is a lot of charcoal production between the Cape, Dakar and Cairo!)
b)The middle man, the consumer, the landowner and the charcoal maker can continue in a now sustainable energy business with higher savings, efficiency and profit margins.
c)If and when the Government decides to regulate and tax the informal energy sector, it will be a sustainable, accountable industry. (Through the growers registrar)
d)Wide scale national environmental enhancement will be the most dramatic result, increasing the natural regeneration of indigenous savannah forests will lead to higher more widespread levels of the ecological trickledown effects that tree planting so generously provides.
Inputs Required
a)Moral and social support for the project initiator from friends and family
b)Money and time
