Legacy Foundation

Legacy began in Malawi in 1994 with the support of Dr. Ben Bryant the godfather of the technology, then professor emeritus and and director of the forest resources institute at the University of Washington Seattle, US. We are now linked daily to groups of active producers, researchers and trainers in more than 45 nations. Our target is to significantly reduce demand for fuelwood and charcoal by extending an awareness of the technology, of the producer and training network--globally. We are most active in East and Central Africa, in establishing the technology in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda and the DRC. An attached report from our recent briquette producers workshop in Arusha Tanzania, reflects the results of that effort.

The fuel briquette challenges traditional roles not only in its use but in its production. Women are not only the main consumers but the main producers and trainers. This poses unique opportunities and challenges to the traditional male dominated fuelwood-supplying, especially-charcoal making-culture everywhere it is present. It is made all the more challenging and rewarding for the typically female producer because it generated sustainable income which she might not ever see.
We have devised through or partners ways of training and dealing with these barriers and promote the approaches and practices in every training event.

Training in how to make biomass briquettes culminates in the costing, and mastery of applied techniques for demonstration, and sale of briquettes the local markets. It is this key feature that drives the whole movement. Unsubsidized sales of fuel briquettes right in direct market competition with traditional fuelwood and charcoal. Techniques have evolved through the many independent producer and training teams for working with charcoal sellers and training of fuelwood suppliers in this new craft of local briquette making. Government, institutional and donor assistance is most welcomed for policy and awareness media support to drive the growth of the movement beyond isolated villages and small urban pockets but it is not needed or frankly very useful to subsidize ongoing production and sale of the product. The simple fact is that where you see briquetting, it exists pretty much by dint of its own appeal to its own local market. Not by subsidies. That is a rare element in development in itself.

There is much talk of standardizing briquette size, blends, shape etc. This originates mostly with institutions and government agencies, but you can say that it is already in effect in the normal selection process that happens every day in a typical local market place. Non-performing smokey or inefficient briquettes are simply not purchased over better ones. Word gets out very quickly.
While there are baselines for good quality briquettes and these are taught during training, the standards are automatically enforced by the simple fact that as a new industry they have to have practical appeal or they do not survive. In time externally imposed regulations will creep into the mix but for now it seems that good training and direct accountability to the customer are the driving controls whether one wants a charcoal based briquette or one that is more agro-residue-based and better for more gradual longer term heat and/or essential room aromatics to drive off insects etc.

We have actively participated in the CREST Stoves and Biomass news groups since their inception over 6 years ago.
Several partners have tested briquettes for CO, CO2 and particulate emissions. These include the Chemistry faculty of the University of Southern Oregon and Boise State Universities, the Northwest Forensics laboratory of the US Department of the Interior, Approvecho Institute in Oregon, US; the University of Nottingham in the UK and more recently the Kenya Industrial Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Several partners, spread over Canada, Slovenia, Kenya, Uganda, Chad, South Africa and the US, have devised improved stoves for briquettes as a result. Unlike wood or charcoal fuel however, briquette quality very much depends upon the skills of the producer. But again, the natural and direct reaction of the local market quickly determines what works best and this drives the local producer attempting to sell to that market.

Annual reports, newspaper publications, media developed on our website. Most recently is our report of the briquette producers workshop in Arusha Tanzania East Africa, which quantifies directly the actual impact of the participants in that region in terms of demand reduction for fuelwood and charcoal in actual tons per year figures as a result of briquette production and sale to the local markets in the producers respective nations.

I would like to share our experience along with that of many others participating at the conference who are already making briquettes and extending the technology in their respective nations. Viz; presses and processing technologies, blends and processing techniques stoves and combustion information etc.
Beyond the technical and training aspects of the biomass fuel briquette technology however, there is a larger issue and opportunity for all concerned with local empowerment in sustained development. There is a growing movement now, one which is not dependent on any one formal center for its growth and sustenance, but one which is growing from within. This movement utilizes the power of the global relatively cheap interactive communications now available to us all. It is, integral, seeing us interact across cultures and gender, across religious, political, and cultural boundaries. It frankly is calling us to realize new ways for functioning as well. For example, how to share ones own technical information globally while maintaining a private sales operation locally. Patents are expensive and have little effect locally. So what is the alternative? How are disputes resolved with no formal center?; How do we harness a collective opinion on our network to improve local agendas, policies and markets for our services? I submit that conventionally structured organisations will not be effective in this effort and it is at this juncture that I would like to learn and assist in the development of new thinking for self sustaining local development, globally.