IN order to finance businesses that promote clean cooking in Zambia, Tetra Tech, in collaboration with USAID, intends to award such businesses with a grant worth US$1 million.
Tetra Tech has also started to give out US$10 million from other stakeholders, like companies, to provide loans for start-ups that are engaged in carbon-free products that offer alternatives to charcoal.
According to a national strategy to reduce deforestation and forest degradation study, Zambia has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, losing about 250,000 hectares each year.
Nearly 25 per cent of deforestation and forest degradation is attributed to charcoal production.
In that light, Tetra Tech launched the Alternative to Charcoal (A2C) project with USAID in January this year.
The initiative will run for five years.
The five year project aims at reducing charcoal consumption in four urban areas – Lusaka, Solwezi, Ndola and Kitwe – by increasing the use of Alternative Technologies and Fuels (ATFs), in order to reduce deforestation and mitigate climate change.
Companies in areas that offer alternatives to charcoal, which includes; electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas, biogas pellets and ethanol gel are set to benefit from the US$1 million grant.
Chief of party for Alternatives to Charcoal project Catherine Picard said the grant will help in mitigating challenges faced by many businesses that promote projects on clean cooking, who find it difficult to access funding.
Dr Picard, however, explained that the project is not meant to ban charcoal use or production but simply minimise its usage, through the promotion of other alternatives that will easily be accessible, affordable and acceptable.
“An outright ban of charcoal will not solve Zambia’s problems related to charcoal consumption. But what we can do is reduce the use of charcoal and try to promote alternatives to put Zambia on a path of cleaner energy and a path of clean cooking,” Dr Picard told journalists at a media training on alternatives to charcoal in Lusaka yesterday.
She added that banning charcoal will not be sustainable for Zambia because it is a source of income and livelihoods for many.
“They [people] don’t go into charcoal production because it is easy – it is incredibly difficult work. They do it because they need money for food, school fees, for medicine and for income,” she said.
The A2C project anticipates reduced consumer demand for charcoal and charcoal energy consumption by 25 per cent.
It further expects reduced deforestation, directly attributable to charcoal production, by seven per cent.
By Moses Makwaya
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