Empowering Women. Protecting Health. Restoring the Planet.

Across Uganda, many women still rely on firewood and charcoal to cook daily meals exposing their families to harmful smoke and contributing to rapid deforestation. Kulika Uganda is changing this story through an innovative initiative that trains rural women to produce and sell eco-friendly fuel briquettes a clean, affordable, and sustainable alternative to charcoal and firewood.

Through this project, women are not just protecting the environment they are earning stable incomes, improving their health, and building stronger, climate-resilient communities.

In Uganda, over 90% of households use firewood or charcoal for cooking. This dependence fuels deforestation increases carbon emissions and exposes families especially women and children to indoor smoke, a silent killer responsible for respiratory illnesses like bronchitis, eye infections, and lung disease.

Meanwhile, most rural women survive on less than $1 a day, with income opportunities tied to seasonal farming. Outside of the planting and harvest seasons, many families struggle to meet their basic needs.

 

Promoting Briquettes for Women’s Income, Health and Climate

A STORY OF FUEL BRIQUETTES: “From Smoke to Strength”

By the Women of Kulika Uganda

“I used to cough every night after cooking supper,” recalls Grace, one of the women in Kulika Uganda’s briquette program in Luweero District. “My children’s eyes would turn red from the smoke. We didn’t know that something as simple as cooking could make us sick.”

Today, Grace’s story like many others has transformed. Together with other women in her group, she collects maize cobs after harvest, burns them in a simple metal kiln, crushes the carbon, and molds it into briquettes using a hand press provided by Kulika Uganda. The briquettes dry under the sun, ready to sell in the local market.

“With these briquettes, I earn money every week,” she smiles. “I no longer wait for the farming season. I can pay for my children’s school and buy soap and salt. My kitchen is no longer full of smoke it feels like a new life.”

These women have become champions of clean energy, leading a quiet revolution powered by waste materials once considered useless. What started as a small training has now grown into a network of empowered women reshaping their communities and protecting Uganda’s forests one briquette at a time.

Why This Matters

Every briquette made replaces a piece of charcoal — saving a tree, cleaning the air, and giving a woman a dignified income.
By supporting Kulika Uganda’s briquette initiative, you are investing in:

  • Women’s economic empowerment
  • Healthier families and communities
  • Climate resilience and forest conservation

This is more than a project it’s a movement for change, built by women, powered by innovation, and sustained by compassion.

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Our Solution: Turning Waste into Wealth

Kulika Uganda’s Fuel Briquettes Initiative transforms agricultural waste maize cobs, groundnut husks, sorghum stalks, cassava peelings into carbonized briquettes that burn cleanly and last longer than charcoal.

Women are trained at the Kulika Training Centre and equipped with skills in:

  • Waste carbonization and briquette making
  • Business and marketing for income generation
  • Health awareness and environmental conservation

Each participant learns how to collect and carbonize agricultural waste, mix it with local binders like cassava flour or molasses, and press it into clean-burning briquettes ready for household use or sale.

By doing so, they gain daily income, protect their families from smoke-related illnesses, and contribute to slowing deforestation.

Measurable Impact

By the end of Phase 1, Kulika Uganda aims to:

  • Train 200 rural women to make, use, and sell briquettes.
  • Increase their annual income by 40%.
  • Improve household air quality for 5,000 people through smoke-free cooking.
  • Establish a local briquette market as a viable alternative to charcoal.
  • Conserve forests by reducing reliance on wood fuel.

Each woman earns approximately UGX 25,000 per week from selling carbonized materials and an additional UGX 200 per kg sold as a sales commission lifting them closer to daily income security.

 

Trains a woman to make and market briquettes
$ 25
Provides a briquette press for a women’s group
$ 100
Supports the construction of a carbonization kiln
$ 250
Equips a full training session for 20 women
$ 500

Fuel a Future Without Smoke

Your donation can ignite CHANGE

Together, we can help 200 women lift their families out of poverty, protect 5,000 people from smoke-related diseases, and save thousands of trees from being cut down.

  • Womens Income
  • Restore Our Climate
  • Protect Health
  • Save Trees
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