New project aims to develop bio-based solutions across Africa

07 September 2021

BIO4AFRICA aims to support the deployment of the bioeconomy in rural Africa via the development of bio-based solutions and circular value chains to help adjust to rapidly growing populations.

Photo: Istock

Africa will need to feed over 2 billion people by 2050 while coping with unprecedented demographic, socio-economic, environmental, climatic and health transitions. Under this light, ensuring Africa’s food security becomes imperative, with the bioeconomy posed to play a leading role.

It is against this backdrop that BIO4AFRICA sets off to support the deployment of the bioeconomy in rural Africa via the development of bio-based solutions and value chains with a circular approach to drive the cascading use of local resources and diversify the income of farmers.

“Our focus is on transferring simple, small-scale and robust bio-based technologies adapted to local biomass, needs and contexts such as green biorefinery, pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonisation, briquetting, pelletising, bio-composites and bioplastics production,” Jean-Michel Commandré, project manager of French organisation CIRAD, which is leading BIO4Africa.

Empowering local communities

“In doing so we aim at empowering farmers to sustainably produce a variety of higher value bio-based products and energy  with animal feed, fertiliser, pollutant absorbents, construction materials, packaging, solid fuel for cooking and catalysts for biogas production. This will significantly improve the environmental, economic and social performance of their forage agri-food systems,” Jean-Michel explains.

To do this, four pilot cases with eight testing sites will be set up in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast, offering more than 300 farmers and farmer groups of all sizes – including small dairy and lower-income farmers, women farmer groups and transhumant pastoralists among others – the opportunity to test them in real productive conditions.

Along the way, over the next four years, the balanced mix of 13 African and 12 EU partners will engage in solid multi-actor collaboration with rural communities and government, co-developing novel sustainable value chains driven by circular business models and supporting deployment in other areas, all while safeguarding agronomic, environmental, social and economic sustainability.

The BIO4AFRICA project is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 research programme.

The 25 project partners are:

Food & Bio Cluster Denmark, Denmark
Centre de cooperation internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement - C.I.R.A.D. EPIC, France
Q-Plan international, Greece
Stichting IHE Delft, Institute for Water Education, Netherlands
Grassa BV, Netherlands
Institute Of Technology Tralee, Ireland
Celignis Limited, Ireland
RAGT Energie, France
Savannah Young Farmers Network - SavaNet-Ghana, Ghana
0KMNOMADS.ORG, Ghana
Agribusiness Innovation Hub- iHUB, Ghana
Institut National Polytechnique Felix Houphouet-Boigny (INP-HB), Ivory Coast
Eastern Africa Farmer’s Federation Society, Kenya
African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Kenya
Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC), Uganda
African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), Uganda
Universite Assane Seck De Ziguinchor (UASZ), Senegal
SCPL Sa (SCPL), Senegal
Asapid (ASAPID), Senegal
ENERGECO AFRIQUE (ENERGECO), Senegal
Country Farm (Countryfarm),Senegal
DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL AS, Greece
Barcelona Plataforma Empresarial Sl, Spain
Fundacion Corporacion Tecnologica de Andalucia, Spain
Sustainable Innovations Europe Sl, Spain
 

Read more about the project

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