Perspectives

The highly invasive water hyacinth also poses some difficulties for Uganda. Water bodies are clogged with floating carpets of water hyacinths, the carpet prevents the incidence of light and thus damages the health of the water bodies and the fishes. Furthermore, the dying roots of the water hyacinths falling to the bottom of the lake produce considerable amounts of the gas methane (CH4), which is about twenty times more harmful to the climate than CO2. Since the biomass of the water hyacinth doubles about every two weeks, it is very difficult to keep the water surfaces free.

NSN would like to put this enormous biomass to good use and has entered into a cooperation with a German expert who has already implemented corresponding projects in Ethiopia and Kenya. The water hyacinth serves as a raw material for plant charcoal, which can be used either as fuel (briquettes) or as a soil conditioner for agriculture. Due to the enormous storage capacity of water and nutrients of the plant carbon in the soil conditioner, yield improvements of up to 30% have been confirmed in worldwide tests. The plant can also serve as a source of protein for fish feed to a limited extent.

To carbonise the water hyacinths, a special oven was developed that can be easily and cheaply constructed from locally available materials and has already been replicated by us in Uganda. Besides environmental protection, climate-neutral fuel and an improvement in agriculture, the main benefit of this project is the generation of new jobs. For this purpose, young people in particular can be addressed through simple but very effective training courses.