GCCA+ climate adaptation: biogas in the cattle corridor

The biogas component of FAO’s EU-funded Global Climate Change Alliance Plus project, which works across nine cattle-corridor districts. AGRILIV and Bio Kindred installed the digesters and trained household operators, working through each district farmers’ association.

Why it matters

The central cattle corridor is fragile rangeland where livestock depend on scarce water and pasture, and where cutting trees for firewood and charcoal drives further degradation. GCCA+ is the second phase of a programme that ran in six corridor districts from 2012 to 2017. It began in December 2018 as a five-year project and added Kalungu, Gomba and Lyantonde.

Objectives

To strengthen the inclusive, gender-responsive and climate-smart resilience of rural people who depend on farming in the cattle corridor. Our biogas work delivers sub-result 3.1: bioenergy, biogas models and energy-saving technologies promoted.

What we did

• Briefed district technical and political leaders, and in Kalungu the sub-county councils too, before any installation
• Shared selection criteria with each district farmers’ association, covering land tenure, water, cattle and labour, so it could choose eight households from its farmer field schools
• Held household sensitisations open to neighbouring farmer group members: 40 people in Sembabule and 55 in Lyantonde
• Trained two or three operators per household in feeding, maintenance, bio-slurry use and safe cooking, with a guide in the local language
• Inducted the associations’ field facilitators and local youth on site, ahead of a week-long service-provider course

Results

• 32 Flexi-Biogas digesters of 6 m³ installed in four districts, eight in each, between December 2020 and June 2022
• At least 95 farmers sensitised at installation sites in Sembabule and Lyantonde alone
• At least half of beneficiaries were women: four of eight in Lyantonde and five of eight in both Kalungu and Sembabule
• Every household has at least one trained operator, and usually two, so the digester keeps running if one person leaves
• Local youth selected in each district for installation and troubleshooting training as biogas service providers
• District technical and political leaders briefed in every district before installation; in Lyantonde, six of the eight households moved their cooking indoors