Notes From the Land of a Thousand Hills

Andréanne Baribeau

Electricity, or “cash power” as it’s called here, remains quite a luxury in Rwanda. It has yet to reach most rural areas and while it’s accessible in cities like Kigali, the electricity bill quickly adds up.

At our house, a 5,000 francs worth of power will last us about a day. That’s just under 10$. Here, you purchase electricity from the national utility company, Electrogaz, the same way you would purchase credit for your mobile phone: by getting a “top-up” at shops such as this one.

A shop that sells “cash power” in Nyamirambo, Kigali. 

The other day, I interviewed Naila Umubyeyi, who works for the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST). She explained that in rural areas, most people can’t afford electricity, so wood and charcoal are still used as the main sources of power for cooking and heating.

She said that this high demand for fuel wood is contributing to deforestation, but that new policies have been put into place to help slow down that problem and find alternative sources of energy.

One of these alternative energy sources is biogas, which constitutes a fairly new sector that is currently gaining momentum in the country. Some prisons, hospitals and schools are already equipped with biogas installations, which use human or animal waste to produce methane gas, used for cooking and heating.

Naila Umubyeyi took me to the Frères Montfortains de Saint-Gabriel convent, in Kiovu, to visit their biogas installation. A local company, whose creator acquired biogas expertise at the KIST, built this installation three years ago. 

 
The Frères Montfortains de Saint-Gabriel convent, in Kiovu, Kigali.

Beside the residence, there is a small barn where two cows help produce the needed waste to run the biodigestors. The cow dung (in the amount of about seven wheelbarrow per day) is mixed with water and introduced in a cement inlet in the ground. 

A barn sits in the backyard of the convent. 

The mixture then makes its way into one of the three biodigestors, located under the soil, where it ferments and produces a mix of methane, carbon dioxide and other gases.

The biodigestor is a dome built under the ground.

The gas is then channeled through a pipe that runs all the way to the kitchen, where it can be connected to stoves like this one. The cook explained that the biogas installation supplies enough gas to prepare all the meals for the brothers, as well as for the sisters living in a nearby convent.

The Ministry of Infrastructure also launched a national domestic biogas program in 2006, which aims to install biogas installations in 15,000 households by 2011. Already, 400 biodigestors have been installed and a new line of credit will soon be available for farmers who also want to switch from fuel wood to biogas. 

I prepared this radio documentary (French) that takes a deeper look at this domestic biogas program, its impacts on the environment as well as on family finances.

Radio Documentary

Credits:

Music by Chad Crouch