Barbra Jane Nantongo (Smart Kitchen)
Barbra Jane Nantongo is the founder and managing director of Smart Kitchen, a Uganda-based company that develops eco-friendly bio-brioquettes and envisions “a world where the planet and people on it appreciate each other,” explains Barbra.
The need for charcoal alternatives in Uganda
Barbra in the process of making bio-brioquettes
Growing up, cooking and sharing meals was part of everyday life for Barbra’s family; however, COVID-19 made it difficult due to the high costs of charcoal. “With no other alternative to run to, charcoal, also commonly known as “amanda” in my mother tongue, was the only option,” said Barbra.
On top of that, even when they were able to purchase a sack of charcoal every two weeks for roughly 70,000 Ugandan shillings (about the equivalent of $20 US dollars), the quality was inconsistent.
Given that charcoal was their main source of heat for cooking, Barbra’s family was forced to significantly reduce the amount of meals they made each day—something that others in her community were experiencing as well.
After seeing how challenging this was for her community, Barbra began researching alternative charcoal sources and learned that organic and agricultural waste combined with water hyacinth could be used to make fuel. Soon after, she experimented by collecting waste, drying and carbonising it—and she had success!
Barbra and two of her team members hard at work!
Smart Kitchen helping communities during COVID-19 and beyond
Today, Barbra’s company, Smart Kitchen, provides restaurants, farms, and low-to-middle income families in Uganda with her sustainable bio-briquettes. In the Because Accelerator, she hopes to learn strategic ways to achieve weekly and monthly SMART goals, as well as develop marketing strategies to implement in the future.
In the next five years, Barbra aims to have created at least 300 jobs for women and to have sold enough briquettes to equate to saving a forest with more than 1,000 trees and 200,000 kilograms of carbon emissions—as normal charcoal is often made from wood.
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