By Milliam Murigi| milliammurigi@gmail.com
Every two months, Lucy Wanjiku from Gathanji Ward, Ol Kalou Constituency, Nyandarua County would cut down a mature tree for firewood. Her family alone, would consume six trees yearly. Now, imagine this happening across a whole ward with more than 500 homesteads due to firewood dependency. Rampant tree cutting had resulted in reduction of tree cover across the ward while smoke made the air heavy and unhealthy particularly for women like Wanjiku who bore physical, financial, and emotional burden of looking for fuel.
This scarcity forced area residents to venture deep into a nearby forest which is 10 kilometers from Wanjiku’s home to collect firewood. Mothers and daughters would carry heavy bundles for hours, navigating steep paths and uneven terrain, exposing themselves to exhaustion, injuries, and even wild animals all in the pursuit of a basic necessity.
“I remember those days clearly,” she recalls, standing in her sunlit vegetable farm. “When I didn’t have money to buy a tree, which cost about Sh 5,000 (US$ 39) including labor and transport, I would take my daughters and walk 10 kilometers into the forest to collect firewood.”
The physical strain left Wanjiku with a severe back problem, and exposure to smoke caused frequent respiratory problems. It reached a point where she could barely stand straight, and the coughing never stopped.
Her back became so debilitating that she had to undergo regular therapy to regain her ability to stand upright, a process that would have been impossible while still walking long distances to collect firewood.
That grueling cycle was broken in 2025 when the Gathanji Green Energy Project was launched in her community. Part of the Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) initiative, the project installed a 16-cubic-meter biogas plant on her farm, bringing clean energy, safety and hope to her household for the first time in years
FLLoCA is a five-year initiative by the Government of Kenya, launched to address climate change at the grassroots level by empowering county governments and local communities.
Supported by the World Bank, Denmark (DANIDA), Sweden (SIDA), and other partners, this initiative aims to decentralize climate finance, ensuring that funding directly supports community-prioritized resilience projects.
“We had heard about biogas before, but we never had the money to install one,” she recalls. “So when the ward climate change planning committee approached my husband and asked if we would like our farm to be a model farm, we immediately agreed. It felt like the opportunity we had been waiting for.”
Since the biogas was installed, Wanjiku’s daily routine has changed completely. She no longer has to trek long distances for firewood or spend money buying trees that lasted only a few months. Cooking is now smoke-free, her back pain has eased and she has more time and energy to tend her farm.
The system, fueled by waste from her three cows, provides nine hours of daily cooking energy and biofertilizer for her farm.
The impact extends well beyond Wanjiku’s farm. Boniface Kimani, Chair of the Climate Change Committee in Gathanji Ward, notes that the project has benefited 30 additional households with 17 of them being women and a nearby school.
Many of the beneficiaries come from vulnerable families, including the elderly, needy and persons with disabilities, who often struggle with the physical demands of collecting firewood.
According to him, before initiating the project, the team asked the community which problems they would like addressed using the FLLoCA funds. Following concerns about firewood scarcity, health risks from smoke, and deforestation, the community chose biogas as the most practical and sustainable solution.
“This community-driven project was created to address both environmental and social challenges that had long burdened the residents. They had witnessed the heavy toll of firewood collection—women walking long distances to collect firewood, families’ spending money they could not spare on trees, and forests that once thrived on their farms disappearing at an alarming rate,” says Kimani.
The success of the project has inspired other members of the community. Some nine families who were not among the original beneficiaries have since installed their own biogas systems after witnessing the benefits on neighboring farms, he adds.
Seeing smoke-free kitchens, healthier women, and more productive farms convinced them that biogas was a worthwhile investment. The initiative is now sparking a broader movement toward sustainable energy use and environmental conservation across the ward.
Margaret Kamunge, Wanjiku’s daughter, says they have also felt the benefits of the project, even though they have moved out of their parents’ home. Before the biogas installation, they often had to chip in to pay for their mother’s medical treatments or buy food, because she was spending most of her money on firewood and was unable to farm due to her severe back problem. Their father, who lives with a disability, struggled to cover all the household expenses on his own.
However, that is no longer the case. Their mother is now healthy and able to farm, growing kales, spinach, and coriander for sale, while also cultivating carrots for home consumption and selling the surplus.
The family now enjoys better nutrition, additional income and a sense of relief, knowing that their mother’s health and productivity are no longer limited by the daily burdens of firewood collection.
“Because she can now farm, when we visit, there are enough vegetables for us to eat and take back home. Also, my children don’t suffer from the smoke anymore, we can cook safely at home without coughing or worrying about illness,” says Kamunge.
According to Kimani, the project has been a success because it addresses multiple challenges at once.
Beyond reducing the need for firewood, it provides clean energy, improves health, and empowers women economically.
The system also produces nutrient-rich fertilizer a valuable byproduct that boosts crop growth, enriches the soil naturally and reduces the need for costly chemical inputs, making farming more sustainable and productive.
This project, he says, demonstrates that locally-led solutions are often the most sustainable because communities understand their own needs, priorities, and challenges.
Because of this project, the community has also started to plant more trees to replace what they lost over the years.
Each biodigester runs on a simple but effective combination of cow manure and water, producing clean energy for cooking as well as organic fertilizer for the farm. According to John Mwangi, Wanjiku’s husband, keeping the system efficient requires consistency—he feeds it daily with four buckets of manure and eight buckets of water.
Their three cows provide enough raw material to sustain the system without difficulty, ensuring a steady supply of gas that lasts about nine hours a day, more than enough for all the household’s cooking needs.
Beyond convenience, the biodigester has created a sustainable circular system in which waste is transformed into energy and nutrient-rich fertilizer, reducing environmental degradation while improving farm productivity and cutting household expenses.
Despite all this benefits, Mwangi says that the transition has not been without hurdles. Water supply remains inconsistent, yet biodigesters depend on a steady flow to function efficiently and sustain gas production.
According to him, water scarcity sometimes affects the amount of gas they can produce but they are learning to manage what they have through careful rationing and reuse and the benefits far outweigh the occasional shortages.
Now, with the biogas systems up and running, some women in Gathanji Ward are guaranteed up to 15 years of smoke free kitchens, 15 years without having to cut down trees, years of improved health for themselves and their families, and more fertile, productive farms that provide both food and income.
