Can Ugandan Slaughterhouses Become Model for Green Industry?

Like many East African nations, Uganda has made huge strides in recent years by developing and expanding its agricultural processing facilities. This is part of a plan to enhance the value of existing farming operations by offering critical support services to farmers, such as storage, processing, and shipping. This approach has shown remarkable success in expanding Uganda’s GDP, but it has also led to the unfortunate byproducts of industrialization: energy consumption, pollution, and biological waste.

Like many East African nations, Uganda has made huge strides in recent years by developing and expanding its agricultural processing facilities. This is part of a plan to enhance the value of existing farming operations by offering critical support services to farmers, such as storage, processing, and shipping. This approach has shown remarkable success in expanding Uganda’s GDP, but it has also led to the unfortunate byproducts of industrialization: energy consumption, pollution, and biological waste.

However, where others see only problems, Dr. Joseph Kyambadde, head of the local Makerere University’s Department of Biochemistry and Sports Science saw an opportunity. According to a story by Good Magazine, Dr. Kyambadde created a plan to use bio-waste from a local abattoir to create biofuel that would reduce the plant’s energy consumption, emissions, and waste. The plan involved recycling the organic waste from the slaughterhouse (i.e., the hair, blood, skin, and fecal matter) into a biofuel, then using that fuel to reduce the plant’s reliance on diesel. He theorized that the process would cut energy demands for the plant by 30 to 40 percent. His proposal led to a grant from with a grant from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), an organization that funds bio-innovation in East Africa, (particularly in the agricultural industry); he slowly turned his vision into a reality.

The plan has been a success. As of April 2015, Dr. Kyambadde and the slaughterhouse integrated recycling systems into the slaughter process, creating between 10 and 25 cubic meters of gas per day. This, in turn, powers security lights, freezers, and refrigerators, as well as producing fertilizer-ready byproducts. To accomplish the actual recycling, the system relies on solar panels to heat water in biomaterial digesters that convert organic material into methane. The result: a 90 percent reduction in diesel bills per month with only 40 percent of the facility hooked up to the system. Dr. Kyambadde wants to finish the process, taking integration up to 100 percent and ultimately removing the slaughterhouse from the power grid or, better yet, returning energy to the grid (sold at a profit to the plant).

This has inspired many others to follow suit. A number of other East African agricultural processing facilities are making similar moves to greener operations. More importantly, industrialized nations have also begun to take notice. Were this technique used in larger agricultural markets, it could vastly reduce man’s impact on the environment and meet the increasing energy needs of ever-more tech dependent societies. This has inspired a number of investment firms to investigate the possibility of creating special for-profit funds designed to encourage the deployment of such facilities in other parts of the world. Thus, Uganda may end up leading the world in the innovative use of agricultural waste products to reduce pollution, emissions, and energy consumption.