Like many countries in Africa, Kenya is a growing economy with increasing energy needs. Kenya relies on hydro-electric power, petroleum and wood fuel for most of its energy needs. More than 90 percent of Kenya’s rural population relies on wood fuel as their source of energy. In urban settings, hydro-electric power is more important, demand growing by 13 percent every year since 2005, according to the Ministry of Energy. Hydro-electricity power accounts for 60 percent of the energy generated by the country.

Africa Harvest started the Trees for Energy project in April 2008 to demonstrate to the Government of Kenya that the national energy deficit could be rapidly decreased through farmer-driven restoration of key environmental services derived from trees and water catchments.

With seed money from Kenya’s Ministry of Environment, Africa Harvest developed a four-pronged energy demonstration project that ran for 18 months. In line with the Africa Harvest mission of fighting poverty through the use of technology, the project chose to mobilise and work with poor small-scale farmers to sustainably increase Kenya’s energy resources.

Project Objectives

1. Increasing multi-purpose trees and shrubs on-farm to increase the rural energy supply
2. Boosting the national supply of power generation poles to keep up with growing demand for electricity connectivity
3. Community restoration of Kenya ‘power’ catchments that drive national hydro-electric power using indigenous trees
4. Investigating the potential of Jatropha for bio-fuel production

Implementing Partners

1. Ministry of Agriculture
2. Ministry of Energy
3. Ministry of Environment
4. Kenya Forest Service
5. Kenya Forestry Research Institute
6. Water Resource Management Authorities
7. The Biotechnology Project Trust
8. Maendeleo ya Wanawake
9. Public and Private nurseries
10. Micro-finance institutions
11. Local community organisations