Consolate
Everyone thinks of contributing something to make the world a better place, but there are a few people that make the decision to take it a step further, and actually act on it!
For Divine, her love for nature and trees, encouraged her to help address the issue of deforestation in a creative way, which would also allow her make money.’’ I wanted to combine my love for the environment and entrepreneurship to do something impactful.’’
Meet Divine Nabaweesi, the Founder and CEO of Divine Bamboo, an innovative forestry enterprise whose mission is to stop deforestation in Uganda through the production of a clean cooking fuel in the form of bamboo briquettes to replace traditional charcoal.
The idea for Divine bamboo began in 2015 when she decided she wanted to do something about conserving nature and trees. ‘’ I started doing research on different types of trees , and ended up falling in love with bamboo .I then went to National Forestry Authority and learnt more about it. With Bamboo, it was a love affair. I loved the way it looked, its strength, sustainability, and the over 10,000 uses attached to it. It turned out to be a miracle plant.’’
With Divine Bamboo, she knew she would have an environmental business that not only provides jobs, but deals with addressing the issues of deforestation, climate change and providing people with clean cooking fuel.
So In 2016, she asked her parents for a small piece of land, bought some bamboo seedlings from Luzira prisons and went to work .’’I had a few savings from my other business, and my family had some ka-land, so I asked them to give me part of it for this project. I started with 15,000 seedlings, and right now we have planted over 50,000 here at Divine bamboo and our farm in Luweero as a whole. With continuous research and talking to people, the journey grew.’’
Divine intimates that Climate change and deforestation was initially not a ‘love’ topic, or topic of interest like it has become of recent. ‘’Yes, I am a climate change advocate. I believe in the conservation, and restoration of natural habitats .Nature is suffering. It’s a real crisis, and we need to do something about it. With Mabira forest, it seems there are plenty of trees as you drive through, but when you take a keen closer look inside, there are no trees within the wider middle area. We are now speaking with NFA, to see if they can grant us a lease to restore the forest. We plan on planting bamboo and some other indigenous trees.’’
The main emphasis for Divine Bamboo at the moment is raising awareness. ‘’Bamboo has over 10,000 documented uses, but we decided to focus on energy, because that is where we feel like the average Ugandan needs urgent interventions. Over 90% of Ugandans use charcoal to cook, a reason they use to justify deforestation. So with Divine Bamboo, we are trying to provide an alternative cooking fuel that is sustainable and clean, in the form of Divine Bamboo briquettes.
Divine’s challenges as she pursues this venture include little or no awareness on bamboo , which means there is a lot of time and energy invested in explaining this topic to people from scratch. ‘Funding is another issue we deal with. Bamboo is expensive so you have to find ways to survive. Technology for the briquettes. We keep trying out different ways of making it better. Nonetheless, for each of those issues, we keep figuring out what to do to solve them.’’
In the short period of time, Divine bamboo has been around, they have managed to make an impact, and she describes it this way: ‘’We have been able to stay in business for 6 years now, with an idea that was new and un-proven. We have stayed long enough to see some Government actors acknowledge that bamboo can help solve the deforestation problem, and are coming on board to work with us. Running a team, and being able to provide income for the team, which is now 17 full-time employees. Bamboo seedling sales have been doing well too ‘’
She has also been a part of some accelerators like YALI, WWW.Impact ventures, Care: Scale by Design 2018, and recently won ‘Energy Start upper 2019 ‘at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue in the category 5 — Quality Access & SDG7. Divine bamboo also holds the record for the most bamboos (11,000) planted in an hour.
Her future plans with Divine Bamboo include getting a lease to plant trees in Kalangalo forest. ‘’The problem is big, so we have to work fast and succeed. We hope to get Kalangalo forest, start energy plantations in the refugee settlements since they have been cleared for settlement and charcoal. Hopefully, in the next 5 years, we could have accomplished this. If we all work together, we can build this thing! 30 years from now, I hope people can look up and say, we also contributed something.’
Her advice is, ‘With entrepreneurship, you have to focus. Walk the talk: do something about it. Go for seminars, and workshops. Persistence is very important when it comes to business. Passion, if you believe in what you are doing, and love it, you are good to go. Just keep going. Just keep doing what you are doing.’’
My motivation for this, is simple: ‘as an African woman, I know from firsthand experience the difficulties of preparing meals with charcoal and firewood and so I wanted to create a solution that improved the lives of African women by saving time, and providing an alternative that is cheaper and cleaner. ‘’
Divine truly believes there has never been a better time to innovate and as young people, as Africans, this is a unique time in history to create solutions that will push Africa to thrive.’
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