Alors que la 22e Conférence des parties sur le climat (COP 22) vient de s’achever à Marrakech, les initiatives pour sauver la planète, elles, continuent de fuser sur le continent.
En Côte d’Ivoire par exemple, on parle de bio charbon, une alternative à la destruction de la forêt
A 150 kilomètres au nord d’Abidjan, Affery. Une commune à mi-chemin entre ville et village. Ici, depuis toujours, l’on a recours au bois comme source d’énergie, pour la cuisine notamment. Un tour dans la ville suffit à convaincre le plus sceptique. Devant chaque maison, sont superposés sur plusieurs mètres des troncs d’arbre séchés qui serviront de bois de chauffe.
La seule source d’approvisionnement : la forêt, bien présente dans la région.
La conséquence directe de cette sollicitation quasi-constante de la forêt est son recul. Et il s’agit là d’un phénomène qui concerne le pays tout entier.
En effet, de 16 millions d’hectares à l’indépendance, le couvert forestier ivoirien ne tient plus aujourd’hui qu’à 2 millions d’hectares.
Pour tenter à son niveau d’inverser la tendance, une ONG verte, l’APFNP, l’Association des propriétaires de forêts naturelles et plantations expérimente depuis bientôt 2 ans quelque chose de particulier à Affery : un charbon issu de résidus alimentaires et agricoles, le Affery Mboby. En Attié, la langue locale, “Mboby“ signifie “charbon“.
L’objectif est d’amener les populations à adopter des comportements plus respectueux de la forêt.
Tout part d’un documentaire suivi à la télévision nationale. Naît ensuite une idée, qui se concrétisera deux ans plus tard, non sans difficultés comme nous l’explique Coné Gaoussou, le coordonnateur de l’APFNP.
« Après le documentaire, on était tous très motivés mais hélas la motivation seule ne suffit pas. Il nous fallait acquérir la méthodologie. Dans ce sens, on a fait des recherches sur internet, déjà, pour voir comment on procédait ailleurs, au Sénégal notamment, comme indiqué dans le documentaire. Une fois qu’on a su comment ça se faisait là-bas, on a essayé de l’adapter à ce que nous avons ici sur le terrain. On a donc commencé avec des peaux d’igname, de bananes et des bagasses de maïs (tiges principales du maïs, celles qui portent les grains) ramassées çà et là.
Mon adjoint et moi, on les a réduites en poudre par la force des bras, en les pilant au mortier. Il faut reconnaître qu’on ne savait pas trop ce qu’on faisait, on voulait juste pour avoir quelque chose. Et cette chose on l’a eue. Notre premier bio charbon. Pas aussi élaboré que ce que nous avons aujourd’hui, mais on en était très fiers. Il émettait beaucoup de fumée mais nous a quand même permis de cuire un kilo de riz. »
Et le coordonnateur de poursuivre : « On s’est donc mis à chercher le moyen de réduire la fumée. De fil en aiguille, on en arrive à la construction d’un four. Notre référence même dans ce projet, c’est le charbon de bois. Pour l’obtenir, il faut faire un four, alors on en a nous aussi fait un ».
Ce four, encore appelé réacteur de pyrolyse, a une forme cylindrique. Il s’agit en fait d’une barrique métallique surmontée d’un couvercle amovible et percé de trois ouvertures au bas. Le couvercle a une sorte de cheminée longue. Quant aux ouvertures au bas de la barrique, l’une d’elles est une entrée d’air et les deux autres servent à recueillir la matière une fois carbonisée.
Avant sa carbonisation, cette matière pourrait être n’importe quel résidu : de la sciure de bois, des épluchures d’igname, de manioc, de la peau de banane mais également des coques de riz (communément appelées paddy), de café, des cabosses de cacao et des bagasses de maïs.
Une fois les résidus carbonisés, ils sont mélangés à un liant dont la formule est gardée secrète par l’APFNP. Le tout est ensuite passé dans une presse puis séché. (Voir image)
Le Affery Mboby se présente actuellement sous forme de boules d’environ 5 centimètres de diamètre.
Pour son utilisation, un fourneau spécial a été conçu (avec du matériel de récupération). Il s’agit du fourneau Ndabo, du nom de la montagne qui surplombe la ville, une montagne plutôt particulière. Elle est recouverte d’arbres bien que faite de pierres.
A ce jour, cent femmes se sont vu offrir le fourneau Ndabo et le bio-charbon. Elles sont unanimes, le bio charbon d’Affery est de loin meilleur que le bois de chauffe ou le charbon de bois. Et elles ne s’arrêtent pas là, de vrais torrents d’éloges. Morceaux choisis : « Il n’a pas d’odeur », « Il ne produit presque pas de fumée », « Il n’est pas salissant », « On a presque l’impression d’utiliser du gaz. Une fois allumé, on n’a plus besoin de souffler », « Il est économique. A quantité égale, on peut cuire deux fois plus de choses qu’avec le charbon traditionnel ».
Les utilisatrices affirment que le bio-charbon garde les mêmes propriétés quel que soit le résidu dont il est issu.
Toutefois, pour les scientifiques, les résidus n’ont pas le même pouvoir calorifique, c’est-à-dire qu’ils ne dégagent pas tous la même quantité de chaleur quand ils brûlent. Les résidus de café ayant un pouvoir calorifique plus élevé que ceux de la banane, par exemple.
Quant au fourneau Ndabo, même avec le charbon ordinaire, il permettrait de faire des économies, toujours selon les ménagères qui ont pu l’essayer.
Parlant d’économies, le Affery Mboby, nous a appris Coné Gaoussou, sera vendu à 100F CFA le kilogramme. 40 Francs CFA moins cher que le charbon de bois.
En effet des études menées à Abidjan et à Affery, ont montré que 400 à 700 grammes de charbon de bois se vendent actuellement à 100F CFA.
Outre les économies, utiliser le bio-charbon d’Affery reviendrait à participer à la fois à la conservation de la forêt ivoirienne et à la création d’emplois.
Une unité de production de bio charbon mobilise en moyenne une vingtaine de personnes de la fabrication du matériel de production à l’obtention du bio-charbon.
A terme, il est prévu l’expansion de la production à tout le pays et la mise sur pied d’un réseau de commercialisation. De plus, une partie des bénéfices servira au reboisement. Pour Coné Gaoussou, une augmentation du couvert forestier ivoirien permettra de capter plus de dioxyde de carbone (composant essentiel des gaz à effet de serre) et comme il le dit « la planète ne s’en portera que mieux ».
En attendant, ne bénéficiant d’aucun financement, l’APFNP n’a que sa volonté, ses projets et des moyens de production artisanaux.




































With the to facilitate people’s access to health care , keen to support the world of health and all stakeholders in the implementation of their digital transformation , Serge has chosen to follow the first innovative Specialized Master e- health (ESIEE Paris) to work on telemedicine projects and e- health in response to multiple needs in the health sector. Serge is the co-founder of MedecinDirect in Ivory Coast, a medical expertise and mobile platform, accessible anywhere, enabling people to interact with doctors on all issues and concerns related to their health or that of their relatives.
Anass El Hilal is a biomechanics engineer graduate at Polytech’Montpellier, France. He worked in the development of innovative medical devices for 2 years. During his stay in Morocco, he realized how people suffering of renal impairment and living in medical deserts had great difficulty accessing their dialysis sessions. Since he works to develop solutions to facilitate their daily lives.
Dr Emmanuel Owobu is a Medical Doctor, Social Entrepreneur and mhealth Consultant. He is the founder & CEO of MOBicure, a mobile health (mhealth) company creating solutions that make use of mobile technology devices and tools such as phones, tablets, SMS, apps, Interactive Voice Recordings (IVRs) and videos to solve some of the most pressing healthcare problems facing developing countries, especially with regards to maternal and child health.
Lilian is an expert in financial inclusion. She has been part of various innovations targeting the low income population. The biggest being Jamii Africa – a mobile micro-health insurance product targeting the low income and informal sector population that impact the lives of over 7,000 families in Tanzania. Lilian has been named by local and international organizations as Top most innovative woman in technology in Africa during the 2016 The World Economic Forum.
Kisito Gamene is a co-founder and the vice-president of Ouagalab (innovation and co-creation hub, established and entirely managed by young people in Ouagadougou ). He is also the co-founder of the Openstreetmap Burkina Faso and a trainer with the UNDP and International Organisation of the Francophonie (OIF) in digital cartography 2.0 in Africa. In health sector, he is the initiator of the project Cartomalaria, a public health initiative to digitize areas at risk of malaria to guide actions of different actors.
Omasirichukwu started his own business couple of years ago : Novadge, a start-up specialized in new technologies. His goal: to create and make available to its customers tools to improve efficiency and reduce the operational costs of their businesses. In the e-health sector he launched the company Chart Synergy Limited. The company develops softwares to improve the efficiency of health systems, facilitating collaboration between practitioners and access to medical information and clinical quality standards.
Alfred Godwin Adjabeng is the Executive Director of Reach Out to Future Leaders Movement, a community-development based organization that is responsible for ensuring that young people are educated, empowered and engaged for local development. School Farms Programs is their flagship program, a program that is empowering rural schools in Ghana to be food sufficient by creating community driven farms in order to grow what they eat whilst using the same space to gain practical skills in agriculture.
Rose Funja is passionate about ICT for Development. She is the founder and Managing Director of Agrinfo, a social enterprise that focuses on documenting farm land ownership for smallholders and forming linkages within the agriculture value chain. Ms Funja is a trained engineer for information systems and is passionate about open data, big data analytics and UAVs.
Originally from the province of Khouribga, this young student is particularly sensitive to the issue of waste treatment, a subject to which she devoted her graduation thesis. After that, she decided to enroll in the incubation program of the university to develop her idea of a company specializing in the construction of agricultural biogas plants . Her goal ? Set up a farm waste management strategy adapted to the culture and the needs of small farmers. In 2013, she founded Biodome, providing farmers with a simple and innovative system to recycle organic materials producing biogas and digestate used as fertilizer.
Jamila is the founder of M-farm, an accessible, easy-to-use tool that enables farmers to acquire information about the current prices of different crops in specific markets throughout Kenya. She is also working to bolster their bargaining power and business planning abilities. In this way, Jamila is empowering entrepreneurs and brokers to act at scale by building on more strategic use of data and information in creating exchanges and entrepreneurial opportunities for new players to foster change and build wealth in the rural economy.
An agronomist by training, Larissa Uwase’s latest innovation, in partnership with the University of Rwanda, is to make spaghetti from the vegetable. Larissa co-founded Carl Group, a youth-led company that aims at transforming orange-fleshed sweet potatoes into well-processed vit-A products like donuts, bread, cakes, biscuits, and chips.
Aboubacar has over ten years experience in ICT4AG and entrepreneurship sector. He founded Amandjine Consulting which is specialized in web and mobile solutions oriented towards rural areas in general and particularly in agriculture. In 2013 he launched mLouma platform to help thousands farmers to sell their crops. Aboubacar is passionate about the company’s goal of providing support to African farming communities. A native of Ziguinchor in the south of Senegal, he comes from a farming family himself, and sees the opportunity to use technology as a lever for development.
Flavien Kouatcha is a 27yo general engineer passionate about agriculture, founder and CEO of the start-up « Save Our Agriculture ». Within his company, he manufactures aquaponics units and individual kits to allow individuals and professionals to produce large volume of organic food in urban space, by using organic fertilizer from fishes excrements. To date, he promotes digital agriculture and he is going to install the first connected aquaponics unit in December 2016 in Douala.
Mehdi is an entrepreneur and creator of frugal solutions in the areas of water and energy. After several significant experiences within EPC companies – Engineering, Procurement and Commissioning – and a strong involvement in several projects combining seawater desalination and solar energy, Mehdi founded Alto Solution in 2012. Alto Solution aims to continually innovate, looking for the most rational and pragmatic solutions for access to water and energy and to meet the challenges of circular economy.
Sohaib El Outmani is a Franco-Moroccan born in 1985 in Paris. He graduated in the fields of information technology and fundamental physics. Currently he is preparing a thesis on thermodynamics of lithium batteries between France and Singapore. He also participated in the design of an intelligent chip connected to batteries with Professor Rashid Yazami, laureate of Draper Prize 2014.
Growing up with a grandfather who owned an electrical workshop profoundly shaped the person Mothwa is today. From a very young age he was fascinated with physics and discovering the fundamentals behind how things work. This drove him to pursue a BSc degree in Electronics and Physics, and an Honours degree in Applied Nuclear Physics, and it was during his post graduate studies that he started developing the idea for the AEON power bag. AEON is a power bag that is able to turn radio frequency signals into electrical energy that can then be used to charge your smartphone, tablet or laptop wirelessly.
Wadongo grew up in a rural village in western Kenya before earning a BSc. (Honors) in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. At 19, he designed the first-ever African solar lamp, dubbed MwangaBora®. Mr. Wadongo is the Chairman of Wadson Ventures, an angel impact investment firm working with promising African start-ups and the co-founder of GreenWize Energy, which is advancing cutting edge African designed renewable energy solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Ifedayo is the CEO of GRIT Systems. At GRIT Systems they build the world most flexible multi source smart metering system capable of managing arbitrary complexity to match this most complex of energy landscapes. They can measure power production in real time from any number of sources, generators, inverters, utilities , mini-grids, solar you name it. They provide power consumers and providers at all scales with easy to understand information about their power consumption habits and offer a real workable solution to cut costs per unit energy and to reduce over all energy consumptions.
Tony harbors an undergraduate degree in Civil and Structural Engineering from The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology’s School of Engineering and currently finalizing his Masters in Engineering Degree in Energy Management from the University of Nairobi’s College of Architecture and Engineering. He is the Co-founder and CEO of Strauss Energy. Strauss Energy provides a solution to the energy problem currently being experienced by businesses and households by providing renewable and cost-effective energy through BIPV technology, a revolutionary solar-powered roofing tile designed and made in Kenya.
Chérif Haidara is graduated in International Business and Development. Expert in Asian markets including China (5 years) and sub-Saharan Africa (+ 10 years), he speaks fluent in Bambara, Mandarin, English and Spanish. He is the CEO of Afrika Solar. The idea behind this project is to connect Malian people to solar energy by producing lamps with local materials, to benefit the greatest number of inhabitants and remedy the scarcity of energy accessibility in Africa.
Nelly Shella is a passionate youth worker and community development agent with five years’ experience working with civil society in the areas of youth and women empowerment, renewable energy, community mobilization, micro-finance, and sustainable agriculture. She currently acts as coordinator of the Rural Women Development Center of Cameroon, where she sees to the day-to-day running of its activities to promote women and youth empowerment, community development and sustainable resource management.
Raowia & Soufiane are the co-founders of Go Energyless, a Moroccan startup specialized in designing, manufacturing and marketing daily use products that work without electricity. Their first project is a 100% natural refrigerator sold in two versions : a basic one, for people in rural areas who do not have access to electricity and a more attractive one for consumers and followers of the bio green products.
Ghislain is the Founder of Africa For Green. Flagship program : social Biogas, a kit for producing biogas at home. From this kit each household can produce cooking gas from organic waste it produces. The aim is to reduce the use of firewood , charcoal as fuel ( the extensive use of wood as fuel leads to the destruction of our forests ) by households and enable better management of their waste energy transformation.
Graduated from ESCA (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce d’Abidjan), Armel KOFFI started his career in advertising field. He soon fell in love with social entrepreneurship and founded Splash, an EdTech startup. Splash launched the web education platform dubbed
Sam Kodo, the founder of Infinite Loop, built his first robot at 8. Whilst personal computers still be a luxury in Togo, he started a company producing affordable microcomputers that can be plugged into any screen. His flagship project is SMARTBAG, a low cost laptop powered with solar energy, useful for those without access to electricity. Sam was one of the finalist of Anzisha Prize 2014 and laureat of the prestigious « Mandela Washington Fellowship 2015 ».
Raoul FOTSO is manager of several social projects in Cameroon. He is CEO and cofounder of KwiiziBox which aims to democratize knowledge via ICT and sharing experiences worldwide. For him, education is the basis for development in Africa. His association Hope For East Cameroon promotes education in rural areas and refugee camps. His dedication to the young entrepreneurship promotion earned him a place in the ecosystem for African startups.
Since her childhood Oreoluwa Somolu was interested in new technologies. After several years spent abroad, mainly in the US, she returned home to work and pursued her interest in women’s empowerment through technology. Oreoluwa registered W-TEC with a small grant in early 2008 and since then, has worked to break down the barriers preventing women from accessing the social, educational, and economic benefits of ICT skills and technology-related careers.
Banhoro Raissa Armelle is an engineering student in computing science. From a young age technologies and entrepreneurship had been passions of hers. Following her dream turned out to be very fruitful since in 2015 she is the winner of the best app developer contest MTN APPLIDAYS in Côte d’Ivoire, with her interactive alphabetising app LUCIE. In 2016, she is selected among 25 women figures in the field of entrepreneurial sciences by the US embassy to participate to the GIST Women Village program. She recently co-founded «BNA Dev Studio», a start-up specialised in game design, web services and graphic design.
Obin is the Co-Founder & Chairman of the BabyLab, first Ivorian FabLab, located in the popular neighborhood of Abobo. Obin is also part of the 34 Young African Leaders of BSF (Libraries Without Borders) Campus program aimed to invent tomorrow libraries in the countries of Francophone Africa and Ambassador representing the Ivory Coast to the Next Einstein Forum program which aims to promote the African scientific and technological innovation on the international stage.
Kodjo Afate Gnikou is the founder of Wooramakes, a green start-up that relies on recycling computer waste to provide high technology. Driven by the » success story » from the » Printer Wafate 3D ( Open source 3D printer designed African made from recycled computer waste) , Wooramakes passes an operational phase in Africa using limited resources to deliver technology at low cost through the manufacture of 3D printers , digital milling machines , laser cutting and others. the project also has an educational component consisting to popularize the technology of 3D printing in schools and niversities.
Kofi Sika is a creative and art director, passionate about gaming universe. In 2010, he starts his own multidisciplinary design studio , EFIXX Studios based on a mix of Operating models Condition from video game studios, communication agencies and NGOs in terms of management. From E education laboratory to communication design this creative industry strategist agency aims to promote and design innovative global solution that are socially beneficial to Africa. Kofi heads the Senegalese chapter of the International game developers Association (IGDA.org) and leads the SpaceApps, an innovation program of the NASA incubator in Dakar, Senegal.
































