Building contractor-turned bio digester, entrepreneur Ambrose Kofi Tsekpo is a man on an upward trajectory in environment conservation terms.
When the SWITCH Africa Green Programme supported implementation of a project known as Promotion of Biogas Technologies” on promoting biogas technologies in Ghana, and which was implemented by the Ghana National Cleaner Production Centre within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), one of the early beneficiaries was Tsekpo.
The project created an opportunity to develop capacity within GAMA for the adoption in planning and use of biogas technology to manage domestic faecal sludge while creating the opportunity for income generation and help move towards clean domestic energy. In addition, the project provided the opportunity for the demonstration of biogas plant construction in schools as examples to eliminate physical handling of the sludge and consequently provide for environmentally sound waste management for sixteen metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in the GAMA.
Hearing about the opportunity for the training, Tsekpo, the technical director of Charmass Biogas Engineering, a construction company situated at Dawhenya, near Tema, applied and was trained for two weeks. He worked for a year getting enough experience to start his own company.
“I decided to be on my own through Wastecome limited and I started building biodigesters,” Tsekpo said. “For the past three years, I have been doing this more than my construction work. I build biodigesters for commercial use in schools.”
Globally an estimated 9.5 million m3 of human excreta and 900 million m3 of municipal wastewater is produced every day. About 95 percent of the residents in Ghana depend on on-site treatment systems for their sanitation needs. With the use of septic tanks, the waste accumulated needs to be dislodged when it fills up. The challenge lies in disposing the waste collected as it poses a risk to the environment and health hazards to the people.
The project aimed at addressing waste disposal challenges through the promotion of biogas technologies. To implement the project, data collection on household and public schools waste management practices as well as a review of the legal framework on renewable energy and baseline assessment of existing biogas plants was carried out. In addition, the participants were trained on using a calculator to determine how big the plant should be, given the amount of waste available.
With five permanent staff, the enterprise sometimes sub-contracts some of its work to other key technical persons.
Tsekpo has now built ten biodigesters with three already producing gas which helps not only to discharge waste, but also to recycle the wastewater which is in turn used in horticultural gardens.
“I had heard about biogas but was not interested in it,” Tsekpo said. “When I went to the SWITCH Africa Green training, I learnt that the benefits were not only, not discharging waste in water ways, but that it paid back.”
When you spend money on biogas, it pays back since you do not discharge waste, and especially in Ghana where if you want to empty your septic tank, you pay so much from 600-700 GHC. When you use biogas, you do not only save on discharge cost but the gas you get can be used for household cooking.
“To date, SWITCH Africa Green has yielded multiple benefits through capacity development, deployment of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) practices and awareness creation,” says Patrick Mwesigye, UNEP Africa Office Regional Coordinator on Resource Efficiency and SCP. “More than 3000 Micro, Small and Medium sized Entrepreneurs (MSMEs) have directly benefitted from trainings, pilot demonstrations and skills development on sustainable consumption and productions applications. The programme has indirectly outreached to 10,000 beneficiaries and these figures are on an upward trajectory.”
Although more expensive that a manual biodigester, his built biodigester are permanent and does not need emptying. It is, therefore, good for the environment.
“If it had not been for SWITCH Africa Green, I would still be struggling on the way,” Tsekpo said. “I have been in the building industry for the past 20 years and although I have been getting contracts, it has been different after joining this programme which trained me in the biogas business.”
Tsekpo says he has managed to pay for the school fees of his two children in the university through the venture, seeing a great impact on his income.
“Every year, I get between four and five contracts for biodigester construction which has given me a sustainable income for use in my home,” Tsekpo said. “Since I started training and constructing biogas plants, I have been able to acquire knowledge and skills in biogas construction which given me another stream of income and improved my financial standing. Now, I am training four people on constructing biogas plants, one of whom can now confidently be on his own.”
