[Stoves] Charcoal in Gambia

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at gmail.com
Thu Aug 11 01:27:23 CDT 2011


Dear All
>   Can you ask Cecil to get a few more price numbers 

He left today. He has numbers from a variety of things but concentrating on domestic stoves and fuels.

>   The Gambian prices of about 15 to 20 c/kg  ($150-$200/ tonne) are certainly pretty low.   

Yes, indicating that it is not in that short a supply.

>Does anyone know of any African country where char production is considered a plus for the economy?  

All over the place. Given the destruction of the domestic food industry by Western countries dumping food below cost, it is one of the only things you can do in a rural are that earns enough money to buy matches, school books, candles and tea. That sort of basic necessity. In Mozambique there used to be a huge ($188m/yr) cashew nut trading system in place. Mostly gone now but partly restored. Income is difficult to generate when the main thing available is land for food production.

>   If the peanut log is 6  Dalasi, your comment below doesn't make sense to me in terms of balancing from the perspective of the user.  

That is the current commercial price were to sell it. I don’t think anyone will take the product at that price. It is a new business. Too much overhead in equipment if you ask me.

>   I'll bet the user of a charcoal-making stove can get the cost of cooking a meal down to zero by selling the produced char (of course for putting in the ground)

‘Bakari’ (who is German) reads the stoves list. He says he has very big improvements using biochar in sandy soils in Gambia. Cecil interviewed him in his garden.

Regards

Crispin

 

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