Charcoal

In an earlier post I showed a picture of a restaurant in Nairobi with a couple charcoal stoves. Because of the high cost of electricity and the fact that it is often out, cooking on charcoal is very common. Charcoal has several advantages over cooking with wood. One of the most obvious is that it is easy to transport. It also does not smoke up the room. I haven't really heard any statistics on mortality figures caused by cooking on wood fires but breathing wood smoke all day can't be good for you in the long run. Food can be prepared on a very small charcoal fire so it would also seem more efficient. In Nairobi, the stoves were ceramic lined which no doubt added to their efficiency. In Kigoma, tailors were using clothing irons that had charcoal in them to heat them. You certainly couldn't do that with firewood. Termites also don't like charcoal so it can be stored for years without being destroyed.

The big, and I mean big down side is that forests are being felled to make charcoal. Charcoal is made by covering wood with dirt and burning it with very little oxygen. There is probably more to it than that but that is nub of it. It is really simple technology. The resulting charcoal looks like the branch that it was before it started. I'm not sure how briquettes are made but small pieces of charcoal don't burn well so it is a technology that maybe needs looking into. Making charcoal is one simple easy cash stream available to your average African living in a rural area.


When I was young Zambia had endless forests. Today Africa's forests are still extensive but are vanishing. A favorite culprit of western activists would be slash and burn agriculture. The real culprit is actually charcoal production. Nowhere in Kenya or Uganda outside of government protected area were there natural forests. Every so often there would be a few trees in a valley or in an inaccessible place. The only trees that have survived are the ones which are no good for either lumber or charcoal. That is not to say there were no trees, there were just ones planted by people. It was not till around midday on my second day in Tanzania that I began to see bush trees forests. As I traveled further in Tanzania the forests which were no more than young trees got to be middle aged looking. Not till well south in Tanzania did the forests appear to be unmolested. Part of the reason I was not seeing old forests no doubt was that trees near major roads are easier to bring to market. In more remote areas there are just fewer people and less incentive to try harvesting wood.

In the north part of Zambia the soil is very poor and people don't farm the land for more than three years before moving to a new area in a true slash and burn model. While the soil rests the trees come back somewhat but are then burned with the hope the ash will add nutrients to the soil. As we came south I saw for the first time truly old forests. I know as I get closer to major population centers the trees will thin.

The fact is at least in this part of Africa we have enough land for food but not enough fuel to cook it. A mature tree takes 80 years to get that way. If young trees are burned before they have a chance to seed then the land will be a open plain. What is the solution? Well, there are non-profits encouraging more efficient stoves. There are police road blocks that ensure that police always have tea and sugar money (bribes). I'm sure that there are no end of speeches about the problem. The easy solution would be to wire up the whole place and install nuclear plants. I just don't see that happening. If things go wrong with that solution the whole world would suffer, where as if Africa ruins her forests or land because she wants to eat then that's too bad.
I'm sorry that this has been such a depressing blog but seeing these problems and knowing there are no easy solutions is hard on me. I could put up pictures but it would just be landscape. Nothing is depressing me like this so anything to follow can't be as down. See ya then.