Traders in neighbouring countries are exploiting loopholes to extract charcoal from Uganda, illegally. According to investigations, some of the charcoal is re-exported to the Middle East. In a four-part series, we look at the underworld of charcoal trade and smuggling. In this first part, Gerald Tenywa traces how charcoal is smuggled out of the country to as far as the Middle East.

Garbage and trenches with filthy water welcome you to this place. As I get closer, music from loudspeakers competes with noise from metals hitting hard against one another. This is Kifumbira slum in Kampala, where the wretched of the earth, such as Joseph Mukiza, live.

As soon as I settle down on a weather-beaten stool, I look at Mukiza’s eyes, staring with bitterness.

He says putting food on the table is difficult. A sooty saucepan near Mukiza’s house stares at me, balancing precariously on three pieces of burning charcoal as the family prepares its next meal. This means that another tree has died to feed Mukiza’s children and his neighbour.

A similar scenario is playing out between Uganda and neighbouring Kenya. Uganda is exporting charcoal to power Kenya’s economy, something that is accelerating the depletion of Uganda’s environment. Some of the charcoal is re-exported to the countries of the Arab world, such as the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

WHAT IS DRIVING CHARCOAL EXPORT?

Uganda’s charcoal export to Kenya comes in the wake of a ban on harvesting and movement of charcoal in Kenya, according to Onesmus Mugyenyi, the deputy executive director of the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment.

This was done to avoid further loss of Kenya’s forest cover; it effectively banned harvesting of trees and movement of charcoal, but not the use of charcoal and trees. The implication of this new policy is that Kenya does not mind about using charcoal as long as it does not come from its stock. It means that charcoal is produced elsewhere (other countries) and is used in Kenya. It also means that the demand for charcoal from the Arab world is passed by Kenya to her neighbours. The charcoal from other countries is allowed to move through Kenya because it has documentation from Uganda.

“Kenya imposed strict guidelines on charcoal burning,” Mugyenyi says. He adds that it has become difficult to produce charcoal in Kenya. As a result he adds, the charcoal becomes more expensive in Kenya than in Uganda.

As a result, charcoal prices have increased, attracting Ugandan charcoal into the Kenyan market.

In short, Uganda is digging a hole in its environment to plug another hole in Kenya and the Arab world. Mugyenyi says this is counterproductive because climate change impacts do not know boundaries.

“We need resilient ecological systems to protect the population in the region from the negative impact of climate change,” Mugyenyi says.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

The popular saying that you reap what you sow, has come back to haunt Ugandans. The lack of clear policies or failure to implement them, is catching up with Ugandans and East Africans.

The current floods in the Great Lakes region that are spilling over into the catchment of lakes such as Victoria, Kyoga and Albert, is a grim reminder that nature can fight back when it is degraded. Experts say the forests and wetlands that used to hold water and release it gradually, have been lost after years of deforestation and wetland reclamation.

DECLINING FOREST COVER

In the last 30 years, Uganda’s forest cover declined from 24% to only 12%. At the current destruction, Uganda’s forest cover will be wiped away in the coming three decades. This could even come sooner, given the rising human population.

According to a study by the GIS team at the National Forestry Authority (NFA), northern Uganda has lost forest cover faster than any other region within the last two decades.

Tom Okello, the executive director of NFA, says the years of rebellion in northern Uganda created insecurity in the region, a situation which kept plunders of the environment at bay.

This has changed in the last 15 years as charcoal burners swamped northern Uganda and West Nile.

Okello has looked at the rate of deforestation in northern Uganda and how much forest cover the region lost in the last two decades. He compared the forest cover in the period between 2000 and 2005, which was when Kony’s war was ending. Then he also looked at 2005-2010, 2010-2015 and 2015-2020.

“I want people to see the impact of charcoal burning on the environment in northern Uganda. Charcoal is the main driver of deforestation,” he says.

Okello says agriculture contributes to loss of vegetation, but most of the biomass from clearing of land for the practice, ends up in the charcoal value chain.

He concluded that the two regions — northern Uganda and West Nile —are taking the same destructive path as Nakasongola in the central.

Okello says as far back as 1964, Nakasongola was supplying Kampala with charcoal. By 1990, the area was degraded. Today, Nakasongola has become similar to a wasteland.

The landscape has been invaded by weeds and thorny shrubs, which are not easy to traverse by animals and the human population. This, according to ecologists, is referred to as natural ways of growing back or nature repairing itself.

Also, termites which were hidden before the ecological balance became distorted by charcoal burning and overgrazing, which have now gone on rampage.

Swidiq Mugerwa, an ecologist at the National Agricultural Research Organisation, says the animals are now eating whatever they encounter, including grass. As a result, large areas of Nakasongola have become bare. This is locally known as bihalamata, meaning bare patches or baldness of the landscape.

This unfolding ecological catastrophe could be repeated elsewhere, particularly the cattle corridor. There are reports of similar cases in parts of Ethiopia and West Pokot in western Kenya.

The cattle corridor runs from the northeast to the southwest, across the central, where Nakasongola is sitting. The cattle corridor extends into northeastern Kenya, southern Ethiopia, southern Sudan and northern Tanzania.

CLIMATE CHANGE DEFINED

According to the National Geographic, this is a long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns.

It also refers, specifically, to the rise in global temperatures from the mid- 20th century to present.

Climate and the earth’s temperature are increasing as a result of human activities such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

The gases that are blamed for causing climate change are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases.

“We are not reducing emissions that are eating away the atmosphere and driving climate change,” Maxwell Kabi, a forest utilisation specialist at the National Forestry Authority, says.

IMPACT ON ECONOMY

As Uganda competes with neighbours and the Middle East to deplete Uganda’s stock of trees, charcoal is going to become scarce and expensive. The cost of production is expected to increase and push the poor, particularly the vulnerable in urban areas, and small scale industries out of business. They have nowhere to run since electricity is expensive.

In future, demand for charcoal will outstrip supply and Uganda’s excess demand will have to be answered from outside its borders.

Also, Uganda depends on rain-fed agriculture, meaning its economy and food security will suffer as it loses her forest cover. Uganda also relies on nature-based tourism as one of the chief revenue earners and employers of its population.

CONTRARY TO EXPORT BAN

In addition to causing big damage to the environment, undermining the fight against climate change and the economy, the export of charcoal is taking place contrary to a ban on export of forest produce. The law forbidding export of raw forest products from Uganda was put in place more than 30 years ago.

“The people who are taking charcoal to Kenya are smuggling it. The export of charcoal bypasses the customs authorities and, consequently, the export is not captured,” Okello says.

He adds: “If you do not know the amount of charcoal that you are exporting, then you cannot manage it.”

Okello agrees with a new report, Black Gold compiled by Global Initiative Against Transitional Organised Crime, which highlights the illegal cross border exports of charcoal. “Indeed, with all the criminalities, the charcoal trade fits the billing as black gold,” he says.

The report also points out that the illegal charcoal trade benefits a few people, including government and district officials, as well as untouchables who have been absorbed into the charcoal cartels.

HOW IT IS ORGANISED

Over the years, trade in charcoal has been changing faces in relation to the actors, markets and sources of charcoal.

Previously, charcoal trade was left to the wretched of the earth. Today, cartels have emerged to export it to the lucrative markets in the Arab world. They work with producers who also double as brokers to deliver the charcoal to Kenya for re-export. In Kenya, the cartels negotiate with the buyers in the Arab world.

THE SOURCES OF CHARCOAL, ROUTES

About 30% of the charcoal that comes from West Nile is exported to Kenya. “I know this for a fact because there is documentation indicating that it is going to Kenya,” one of the sources says.

The charcoal comes from West Nile, parts of Adjumani, Amuru, Kitgum and Agago. It makes its way into Kenya, through the porous borders of Tororo and, mostly, Busia. The charcoal is repackaged on the Kenyan side of the border in Busia. It is then ferried to the Arab world through Mombasa.

BIG REVENUE EARNER FOR DISTRICTS

Okello says the need by local governments to generate local revenue has turned charcoal into a source of revenue.

“Charcoal contributes the biggest part of local revenue. Because it is a source of revenue, districts are tendering out the charcoal business.

“The idea of sustainability has been abandoned. The more trees you cut, the more revenue you get.

“The more the district forest officers generate, the better recognition and rewards they earn as highly performing officers,” Okello says.

DISAPPEARING TREES

Fred Onyai, the monitoring and evaluation officer at the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), says the battering of the environment in the cattle corridor started with combretum molle and comretum collinum, trees which make the best charcoal. He adds that charcoal burners prefer species of combretum, but that the problem is that it is a slow-growing species.

Onyai says as the preferred species become scarce, the charcoal burners have shifted to valuable trees that were previously spared the cut.

He names Sheanut as one of the trees that is being attacked by charcoal burners.

Onyai adds that the practice shows a crisis that is being manifested on Uganda’s landscape.

The charcoal burners are also converting fruit trees, such as mangoes, into charcoal.

This story was done with the support of Dunia, a CFI project - French media development agency

Part one: How Uganda's charcoal is sold to Middle East

In a four-part series, we look at the underworld of charcoal trade and smuggling. In this first part, Gerald Tenywa traces how charcoal is smuggled.

Charcoal burning is a big contributor to the disappearing forest cover in Uganda

Gerald Tenywa

Journalist @New Vision