Black Soldier Fly Opportunities Explored in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Ivory Coast. 

As part of its activities aimed at deriving value from biowaste streams, Prevent Waste Alliance initiated a project to develop Black Soldier Fly (BSF) technology in three African countries: Uganda, Ethiopia, and Ivory Coast. This joint project is being implemented by ACEN Foundation in collaboration with other partners, including Trinomics, Eclose, and EAWAG, and is financed by GIZ as well as the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). 

The team is tasked with developing a guide for BSF operators and a general methodology for assessing BSF feasibility, which will be piloted, tested, and prototyped in the target countries. Another goal of the project is to capture and replicate best practices and lessons learned across African countries. 

Besides reducing GHG emissions, the project targets food security, livelihood creation, gender and youth empowerment, and addressing environmental and waste management challenges. This project aims to lay the groundwork for future BSF initiatives in the selected countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Uganda), fostering favourable institutional and economic conditions, enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, and mainstreaming waste-based BSF farming. The project seeks to enhance awareness, knowledge, and skills related to BSF waste processing, identify implementation areas in the selected countries, and advocate for integrating BSF technology into waste management policies, low-carbon strategies, and national climate mitigation goals. 

This is a multi-year project that began in February 2024 and is scheduled to conclude by 2025. In the first phase of the project, kick-off workshops were conducted in each of the countries, bringing together relevant stakeholders to explore opportunities, identify existing enabling ecosystems including policy and legislative frameworks and address capacity gaps in infrastructure and technical skills for optimal production.

The workshops also provided a platform to discuss how BSF technology could align with existing composting initiatives, analyse the flow of waste coming from food processing (ie brewery, dairy waste, juicing factories) and how to design a feasible business model.

For more information please reach out to the Email: piotr.barczak@acenfoundation.org