Green Bio Energy – Uganda
Green Bio Energy Ltd. is a Kampala based up cycling company leading the charcoal briquettes industry in Uganda. The main purpose of the mission is production and distribution of briquettes, vocational training in briquettes production as well as distribution of briquettes production machinery.
As they would describe themselves :
“Headquartered in Kampala and with a production site in Mukono (20 kilometers from the Capital City) Green Bio Energy Ltd. is the first and leading renewable energy business to commercialize carbonized briquettes in Uganda. Our business objective is to consolidate our leadership position in the charcoal briquetting industry in Uganda and eventually become East Africa leader in up cycling services.”
In Uganda about 96% of the 36 million inhabitants use wood-based fuel for cooking and heating, which represents a potential market of 34.5 million of people for GBE. Ugandan poor families (64.7% of the population lives on less than $2 a day) use a significant part of their daily income ($0.8) on expensive cooking fuel such as wood charcoal which is largely wasted in inefficient cook stoves. It all together causes deforestation (Uganda lost 2/3 of its forests in the last 20 years), emits a large amount of greenhouse gases (CO2 emissions have increased by 358% since 1990 in Uganda) and produces smoke causing deadly illnesses (in Uganda 23% of children under five suffer from an acute respiratory infection related disease). These consequences contribute to severe erosion, making landslides more likely to happen (e.g. Bududa in 2012), and to global climate change which is expected to hit the poorest the hardest.
Read more information below..
project details
What: Develop the briquette market in Uganda
When: Preparation Phase: October – June
Implementation Phase: 6 weeks in the summer
Implementation Phase: 6 weeks in the summer
Where: Mukono, Uganda
About the project
This project is really at the beginning phase, and it’ll be challenging.
Your mission as an AFD student would be to :
– develop the briquette business in Uganda;
– find an efficient way to increase production (optimisation, better organisation and anticipation from the sales team) to finally produce 80 tons of briquettes per month;
– develop the online visibility strategy;
– keep track of the capacity shaping work released during the project;
– research on the future products and sales models to adopt.
But you would be able to see really your impact at the end easily. You can count on the organisation to provide you the data and the necessary details.
A coach would be there too to guide you along the way.
Who are we looking for?
We are looking for 4-6 excellent and highly motivated students. Students of all academic backgrounds are allowed to apply. However, for this project we are especially looking for students with backgrounds or special interest in:
Business engineering
Marketing
Engineering
Bioengineering