In a dusty, unpaved school compound at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya, Umutoni and her classmates use waste paper to make briquettes for cooking. Nearby, other boys and girls laugh loudly while constructing clean cookstoves under a tree.
The 18-year-old Umutoni, a learner at Bluestate Secondary School, is championing briquette-making and energy-efficient stoves to curb deforestation in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Known as jiko, the clean cookstoves use up to 70 percent less fuel than traditional stoves and reduce dangerous indoor air pollution.
Three-quarters of Kenya’s population has access to electricity, and 90 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources like geothermal, wind and solar. While Kenya is forging ahead in renewable energy and access to electricity, energy tariffs are still high beyond the reach of many.
As a result of issues like limited energy access, about 2.1 billion people across the world, the majority of them women and girls, do not have access to clean cooking, according to the International Energy Agency. They continue to inhale dirty fumes while trying to put food on the table.
Particulate matter and other pollutants in household air pollution inflame the airways and lungs, impair immune response, and reduce the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. Each year, 3.2 million people die prematurely from illnesses caused by household air pollution from burning solid fuels and kerosene for tasks like cooking, according to the World Health Organization.
Unfortunately, the majority of refugees in Kakuma are among those who do not have access to electricity. Umutoni moved to Kakuma Refugee Camp after fleeing the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was a child, and she lives there with her mom and five siblings. “I lost my father during the war. My mother is sick, so I am the one taking care of them,” Umutoni, who requested only her first name be used for safety reasons, told TriplePundit.
Located in Turkana County, near the border with South Sudan and Uganda, Kakuma Refugee Camp is in an arid region that can go up to five years without rain. The soils are barren and barely support the growth of trees. The camp’s 304,000 people compete to deplete the few available forests to get energy for cooking. Some cut down trees, process them into charcoal firewood and sell it to their neighbors in the camp as their only source of livelihood.
Though the family is given food from donors in the camp, Umutoni is responsible for fetching firewood to cook it. “There are hardly any trees here. I end up diverting our family’s monthly allowance to buy charcoal,” she said. “This made our lives hard.”
Now, through briquette-making, she is reducing the community’s reliance on charcoal, ultimately saving the forests. On a hot morning, she sits giggling loudly and bantering with four of her classmates. They watch as other schoolmates sweat while making jiko in the dusty courtyard.
Dubbed the Green Youth 360 Project and supported by the local nonprofit Girl Child Network and Qatar’s Education Above All Foundation, the youth initiative is training thousands of youth at Kenya’s refugee camps and host communities in green initiatives like cookstove-making, waste management, beekeeping and tree planting from 2023 to 2026.
Umutoni and her classmates in the project build the jiko using readily available metals. They take a metal cladding and assemble it into a bucket shape around a ceramic liner. Other pieces of metal sheets are cut to make the handles, legs and pot rests. Fuel fills the inside of the bucket, and pots and pans sit directly on top. “It is then painted green to prevent it from rusting,” she said.
She uses waste generated at the school and in the community to make briquettes for fuel, including paper, sawdust and agricultural residues. The material is shaped into balls about the size of a fist that can fill the inside of the cookstoves. This preserves the forests from being felled for fuel, reduces carbon emissions, and maintains ecological balance by easing pressure on trees and shrubs.
The project empowers young Kenyans with income-generating skills, said Dennis Mutiso, deputy director of the Girl Child Network. “It is giving the learners skills that they can use when they get out of school,” he added.
Angel, another learner at Bluestate Secondary School who requested only her first name be used, said she sells the cookstoves she makes in the camp for a small fee. “I use the money to buy stationery,” 17-year-old Angel who, like Umutoni, fled the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo when she was a child, told 3p while making a jiko.
Umutoni uses the proceeds from selling clean cookstoves to her neighbors to feed and clothe her family. “The jikos are becoming popular here,” she said with a wide grin. “So far, I have sold nearly a dozen to women in my community.”
This is a reflection of how much the youth own the Green Youth 360 Project. “They found in these skills an opportunity for them to generate a bit of income and help in the household,” said Tareq Bakri, a programs specialist at the Education Above All Foundation.
More than 165,000 kilograms of briquettes have been made from organic waste in Kakuma Refugee Camp so far, according to the Girl Child Network. And more than 3,600 stoves have been built to support clean cooking practices. Now, Umutoni is passing the skills and knowledge to other women and girls in the camp.
The youths in Kakuma are also planting trees around schools and homes to reduce rising temperatures as a part of the Green Youth 360 Project. Local temperatures are scorching and can go as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit, and trees provide shade to help cool the school and its environment. Roughly 900,000 trees have been planted in the Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee Camps since the inception of the project, contributing about a third of the project’s target to plant 2.4 million trees by 2026, according to the Girl Child Network.
“Whenever there is a break time, learners sit under big shades, including the teachers. Sometimes, some lessons are even carried out under that shade,” said Joseph Ochura, sub-county director for Turkana County under the Teachers Service Commission. “Some of the girls are at the forefront of tree planting.”
Umutoni has planted more than a dozen trees since joining the project. “With the high temperatures in this part of the world, I thought a tree could not grow,” she said. “But out of the several trees I have planted, only a few have died.”
Now, Bluestate Secondary School is surrounded by clean and fragrant air, a direct result of thriving trees and access to cleaner cooking options.
The same year this project launched, African leaders sought $4 billion to transition 80 percent of the continent’s people to clean cooking stoves at the first Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. Clean cooking was still central to the discussion at the second summit this year, with non-governmental organizations seeking financial commitments and political will, but investments will have to increase to reach clean cooking access for all by 2030.
In the meantime, Umutoni, who wants to be a nurse after completing secondary school, is planning to expand her jiko business venture. “I am happy that I am playing my part to save the planet from warming,” she said.
