From potential to practice: rethinking Africa’s biogas revolution

Résumé

In May 2021, a newspaper article from Kampala, Uganda made the rounds on Twitter for the wrong reasons. The story reported that a new biodigester project, located at a wastewater treatment works in the city, and funded by the state, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the European Union (EU), would not be able to produce methane because the faecal matter generated from Kampala residents, and used by the biodigester as feedstock, did not contain the ‘necessary ingredients’ to produce gas (Odyek, 2021 ). The article quoted Dr Florence Grace Adongo, the director of water resources management in the Ministry of Water and Environment as saying “It seems that what we are eating is lacking something, the diet of the people is not producing methane…. it is not viable” (Odyek, 2021 , p. 1). Although the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), which owns the digesters, quickly disavowed the story, claiming the plants had not yet been commissioned (NWSC, 2021 ), Twitter users enjoyed poking fun at the story. Commentators seesawed between questioning the veracity of Dr. Adongo’s claim, and positing other, underlying causes that may be responsible for the plant’s failure to produce methane, such as poor construction or siting, and jokingly offering emergency supplies of high-methane producing foods as supplementary rations to Kampala residents. For many of us who have worked with, or written about biogas on the continent, who have dealt with quotidian mishaps and structural barriers or follies which often lure projects towards their inevitable, ignominious ends, the story evoked a sense of déjà vu: a missed opportunity to engage with the root causes of project failure.

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