Safi Sana Ghana Ltd is waste resource social enterprise based in Accra, Ghana that uses a circular waste treatment model to support local communities and protect the environment. The company has been in commission for the past 6 years and is leading a revolution to tackle Ghana’s sanitation challenges while also, generating energy to supply to the national grid.
Funded by SWITCH Africa Green with the Ghana National Cleaner Production Centre as the grantee, project Promotion of Biogas Technologies Safi Sana uses a circular waste treatment model to support local communities and protect the environment.
Safi Sana’s project in Ashaiman, a settlement of 250,000 people in Ghana, was specifically set up to test the model of collecting waste from improved public toilets and organic waste sources to produce electricity, biogas, organic fertilizer, and seedlings. Every day, over 9 tonnes of waste are brought in, with a plan to increase this volume to 25 tonnes. This waste is treated in a of number stages, resulting in energy, irrigation water, organic fertiliser and seedlings.
The factory at Ashaiman is locally run with 90% of the factory staff being local to the community. They have been trained intensively through a training programme that was intended to spur their previously limited economic prospect.
The social enterprise runs a simple model that sees it collect faecal substance and solid waste, and the pass it through its factory machines to manufacture organic fertilizer for agricultural purposes, and energy to sustain the national electricity grid. This waste comes in the form of organic waste from the industries and the food markets.
By converting organic and faecal waste into electricity, soil conditioner and irrigation water, innovative waste-to-resource factories such as the one in Ashaiman (found in the greater Accra region) have the potential to deliver huge economic impact in developing countries, as well as vastly improve health and sanitation in slum communities.
Safi Sana presently sources solid waste from the Ashaiman marketplace, Accra abattoir and faecal matter from the different public toilet amenities within the centre.
“One of our initiatives is to ensure that energy which is very important to the livelihood of mankind is produced with minimal impact on the climate,” Gideon Annor-Gyamfi, commercial manager Safi Sana Ghana Ltd said. “We try to train people in that regard to ensure that scaling up energy that is produced wouldn’t have adverse effect on the climate which in turn, affects the production of food and have adverse effects on other things in the society.”
Safi Sana employed an appropriate technology, and which required initial significant investment but once installed it was found to be low tech, easy to operate and cost-effective to maintain and replace. This investment provided a substantially more economic and efficient way of working compared to the traditional waste water plants, as well as promoting more socially responsible processing of industrial but non-toxic waste leading to health and environment improvements.
