Workshop for Exchange and Experimenting Between Renewable Energy Stakeholders Held in Bukavu/South Kivu Province

English translation by community member LightMyWay.

The problems linked to deforestation and forest clearing call for input from key stakeholders involved in the renewable energy sector in South Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

After a bitter statement of the very negative impacts of this problem, notably a resurgence in natural disasters, landslides, sinkholes, floods, climate change….

The Center for Renewable Energy (CERD) was initatied by the Diobass platform and the German Technical Cooperation Agency in an effort to promote renewable energies in South Kivu.

Faced with the above problem, CERD invited stakeholders from the renewable energy domain to a workshop that it was holding on 11 and 12 February 2015 in the conference rooms of the General Reference Teaching Hospital in Bukavu. Here dozens of organizations met up for two days to consider the growth in popularity of biomass briquettes as an alternative energy source.

This workshop was moderated by Mrs. Madeleine BWENGE, Coordinator for Action of Environmental, Gender and Sustainable Development Education in Kivu (AEGDK).

At the workshop’s conclusion, the energy sector stakeholders unanimously agreed that 95% of the Congolese population uses charcoal as the sole cooking fuel.

To this effect, the forests are undergoing huge pressure due to carbonization processes. This practice also increases gas emissions, worsening the greenhouse effect that greatly influences climate change in the region.

With these blatant realities in mind, the renewable energy stakeholders reflected quite a bit on the ways and means of allowing the population to promote biomass briquettes as an energy alternative to deforestation, and of obtaining some with the goal of limiting, even the slightest bit, the ecological destruction the province is facing.

Madeleine DRC