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Swaziland Farm IBC/ARTI Hybrid Biogas System

The Solar CITIES Swaziland team finishing up the biodigester for grandpa Simon’s farm.

August 26, 2014

Simon, the grandfather of Sakhiwe Songhe who helped us build the digester at Sundowner’s Backpackers Lodge, lives on a farm in Swaziland outside Manzini where he has fruit orchards and keeps cattle, geese, and chickens.  It is here that Sakhiwe and Bonkhe are conducting this year’s follow up to their hydroponics experiments. They are proving to farming communities that you can achieve at least twice the yield on Swaziland’s poor land using compost to build soil.  Solar CITIES went to the farm the weekend of August 23 and 24. With the family and international volunteers, we built a Solar CITIES IBC/ARTI hybrid biogas system to provide cooking gas for Simon and fertilizer for Sakhiwe and Bonkhe’s science-in-action experiments as they go into their senior year of high school.

Sundowner’s Backpacker Lodge Digesters

The Solar CITIES Swaziland team, co-led by Sergio Almeida

August 24, 2014

Dr. T.H. Culhane, Rohit Fenn, and Amit Fenn traveled to Swaziland to work with Science in Action winners Sakhiwe Shongwe and Bonkhe Mahlalela. Rohit is a young man from India who designed a more efficient toilet and Amit is an evolutionary biologist and Rohit’s older brother. Sakhiwe and Bonkhe were interested in working with the Solar CITIES team to add the ‘food waste to fuel and fertilizer’ biogas  solution to their toolkit for improved low-cost hydroponics in Swaziland

We stayed at the Sundowners Lodge near Manzini. At the lodge, Peace Corps and other project teams spend their evenings. There is also a crossflow of Swazi and international visitors who share ideas for making the world a better place. During the week, everyone learned how to build a biodigester and saw how they can provide energy security and also help provide food security too!

The Solar CITIES team built a Solar CITIES IBC/ARTI hybrid system for the lodge. Immediately after, they built another one and transported it to the farm of Sakhiwe’s grandfather, Simon. Simon is on the right in blue in the picture.

Now Swaziland has two operating biodigesters that provide fuel cooking food and fertilizer for growing crops. 

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Biogas at Bells School in Nigeria

Students at the Bells School Nigeria celebrate the completion of a digestor

August 30, 2011

At the end of the summer of 2011, Culhane was joined by Ohio State University Urban Planning Professor Charisma Acey and Nigerian-German friend Paul Chido Iwunna on a trip to Nigeria, hosted by former President Obasanjo, to spread the “gospel of biogas” in Abeokuta. We built at His Excellency’s home, at the Bell’s School for Girls, at the Sacred Heart Hospital and at the home of a University Professor, Moses Oyatogun.

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Biogas at a Presidential Residence

Former Nigerian President Oluwasegun Obasanjo demonstrates the Insinkerator Food Waste Grinder that Emerson Electronics gave him as a gift to use with his home biodigester.

August 30, 2011

His Excellency President Oluwasegun Obasanjo graciously invited us to his home to build a biodigester and then brought us around Abeokuta to see his presidential library, farms, industrial operations, plantations and reforestation areas. We also attended church services and gave presentations at the local churches on the miracle and blessing of biogas as a way to end deforestation, one of President Oluwasegun Obasanjo’s passions.

Once we had built a home bioidgester for the former president and he saw how it worked, he brought us to a school, a hospital and a university to give workshops and build more biodigesters.