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The inspiring journey of Divine Nabaweesi, who left her real estate business to establish Divine Bamboo Group Ltd (DBGL), a company focused on growing bamboo and transforming it into various handicrafts. DBGL aims to tackle the charcoal trade and its environmental impacts by promoting bamboo products as sustainable alternatives.

Divine Nabaweesi gave up her real estate business to start a business growing bamboo and turning it into other kinds of handicrafts. Seven years later, she aims to employ bamboo products to help reduce the charcoal trade and its impacts. Her Divine Bamboo Group Ltd (DBGL), which is situated at Najjeera in Kira Municipality, Wakiso District, is a part of Uganda’s sustainable energy business.

Seven years ago, the company’s founders began investing in businesses centred on environmental protection, but they soon realised that bamboo offered more advantages than the majority of tree species that could be grown in Uganda. One of the causes was the ease with which it could be grown anywhere in Uganda, with the many varieties thriving in various regions of the nation.

The group managing director, James Kyewalabye, claims they also understood that communities would embrace it due to the social benefits it had, such as nutrition, a sustainable source of firewood, and crafts that people could easily make.

The company claims that by using bamboo resources to provide energy alternatives, they expect to eventually see an African continent with no deforestation. Currently, 100 percent of Ugandans live in rural regions and rely on firewood and charcoal for heating, which according to government statistics results in the yearly loss of 200 hectares of forest.

According to Kyewalabye, their value chain is sustainable because the products are made from the raw materials that they grow, in contrast to other programmes and green energy projects. According to him, the corporation has hired hundreds of small-scale farmers and is also creating its own bamboo forests.

With the assistance of technical specialists, DBGL, which was founded in 2016, has been developing a briquette for the past three years with the goal of ensuring that it addresses market concerns over the available products. After testing the briquettes, Kyewalabye claims that their product, which costs 50,000 shillings for a 50-kilogram pack, is actually 30% less expensive than those available on the open market. This, he claims, will encourage more Ugandans to adopt the use of briquettes rather than the conventional charcoal.

Divine Bamboo has laid out growth plans to raise its yearly briquette production capacity from the existing 240 tonnes to 2400 tonnes in ten years. By creating 5,000 acres of bamboo plantations and working with 5,000 smallholder farmers over the course of the following five years, the company hopes to ramp up the supply of raw materials in order to meet these objectives.

Additionally, Divine Bamboo intends to increase the nursery’s capacity from the existing 200,000 seedlings to 1,000,000 seedlings. The company is now prepared for growth, according to Nabaweesi, the founder and CEO, after securing land in the Luwero District for the relocation and development of their business.

One acre of bamboo can store 6.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, making it a useful carbon dioxide sink. The company estimates that by producing 2400 tonnes of briquettes, 8,000 tonnes of wood will not need to be harvested, conserving an equivalent number of trees.

“Therefore, by saving over 8,000 trees annually, the project will enable the absorption of over 2000 tonnes of CO2 annually by the 10th year.”

Additionally, it is anticipated that using the more than 2,400 tonnes of briquettes that DBGL will manufacture will help reduce CO2 emissions by more than 14,000 tonnes yearly in ten years. According to Nabawesi, because it provides an alternative economic answer, this solution and model will also go a long way in allowing the rural populations to heed government calls against the charcoal trade.

She identified one of the primary difficulties faced by small businesses in the sustainable energy sector as a lack of access to financing, which is mostly brought on by a lack of knowledge about the available sources.

For instance, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development has given aside 65 million dollars (more than 200 billion shillings) for energy entrepreneurs in the private sector. According to Justine Akumu, Senior Energy Officer at the ministry, the five-year Electricity acquire Scale Up project has made it much simpler for small and medium-sized businesses to acquire financing.

According to her, the proposal also includes a support component for briquette manufacture under the clean cooking segment to give investors access to tools, technology, and other resources.

One of the international groups that raises money for the preservation of nature and the conservation of wildlife is the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). Energy sector innovators as well as the government are required, according to Yona Turinayo, Energy and Climate Programme Coordinator of WWF Uganda, to promote goods that underprivileged groups may easily adopt. According to Turinayo, they have developed a credit financing programme for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) run by microfinance institutions, where investors can get credit to finance sustainable energy goods.

The International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR) also claimed to have particular initiatives for promoting the manufacture of bamboo briquettes. According to the administration assistant at INBAR Uganda, the organisation is also collaborating with other institutions, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, to create industry-specific regulations that would improve access to government services and funding for bamboo producers and processors.