Animal Manure as an Alternative Bioenergy Resource in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: Present Insights, Challenges, and Prospects for Future Advancements

Timothy Sibanda () and Jean Damascene Uzabakiriho
Additional contact information
Timothy Sibanda: School of Molecular and Cell Biology, Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa
Jean Damascene Uzabakiriho: Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, Engineering and Natural Sciences, University of Namibia, Windhoek 13301, Namibia

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Energy availability is a pivotal driver in fostering sustainable socio-economic development. However, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) grapples with paradoxes headlined by abundant energy resources but with the world’s lowest access to clean energy index per capita. Faced with a lack of access to clean energy sources like electricity, rural areas in the majority of SSA countries almost exclusively depend on biomass-fuels, mostly fuelwood, leading to heightened respiratory health risks as well as environmental degradation and accelerated climate change. As an alternative, this review investigates the potential of animal manure as a sustainable energy resource for rural SSA households, emphasising its utilisation as a feedstock for biogas production using anaerobic digestor technology. Results show that despite the abundance of literature that reports on successes in lab-scale bioreactor optimisation, as well as successes in the initial rollout of biogas biodigester technology in SSA with the help of international collaborators, the actual uptake of biogas bioreactor technology by rural communities remains low, while installed bioreactors are experiencing high failure rates. Resultantly, rural SSA still lags significantly behind in the adoption of sustainable clean energy systems in comparison to rural communities in other regions. Among some of the hurdles identified as driving low technology assimilation are onerous policy requirements, low-level government involvement, high bioreactor-instalment costs, the lack of training and awareness, and water scarcity. Prospects for success lie in innovative technologies like the low-cost portable FlexiBiogas system and private–public partnerships, as well as flexible energy policy frameworks. Bridging the knowledge-implementation gap requires a holistic approach considering cultural, technological, and policy aspects.

Keywords: energy poverty; biogas; animal manure; sub-Saharan Africa; greenhouse gas emissions; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/8/1839/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/8/1839/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:8:p:1839-:d:1374101

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().