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In this newsletter, we report on our bamboo planting programme in Ghana. The plantations are marked with red dots. The plantations are spread all over the country. We have thus gained experience with bamboo in various climate zones since 2012.
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In several places in Ghana, there is more awareness about benefits of planting bamboo. A total of over 100 hectares have now been planted with our and your help. This gives a good start for working with the Volta River Authority.
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You can read more about this later in this newsletter.
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4x4 Toyota Hilux
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With your financial contribution, our Barbarugo team in Tamale, northern Ghana, has purchased a four-wheel drive Toyota Hilux. The car will be especially useful in the rainy season. Unreachable places will become accessible. We expect that bamboo cuttings can be brought to new plantations faster and that long distances can be covered more easily. The car was immediately put to use. Here in the photo, bamboo charcoal produced at the plantation near Tichelli is loaded.
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Tichelli
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From the plantation at Tichelli, bamboo poles are now regularly sold. The local owner now reaps the benefits of this and provides this work for local people.
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The photo shows Diana processing prunings into bamboo cuttings.
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Sheini
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The plantation in Sheini looks beautiful and poles can be harvested. (photo August 2023)
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We also have setbacks. Our plantation in Oda is unfortunately under water due to excessive rainfall. This is unusual because normally by November, the dry season has long since set in. Fortunately, the nursery in Oda is still functioning as expected.
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With pain in our hearts, we see how the gold rush devastates the land. At the same time, we also see how quickly the jungle is recovering with the planting of bamboo. In Bekwai, we started planting in 2017 and the photo below shows bamboo thriving around the excavation.
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Bamboo is growing, despite the soil contamination due to the use of heavy metals to distinguish gold. You can clearly see how the water in the river is polluted and dangerous to use. As indicated in previous newsletters, Barbarugo Foundation is sponsoring a study by a Ghanaian PhD student who is investigating the effects of planting bamboo on polluted soils. The hope is that bamboo can be used to clean the soil and make it suitable for agriculture again. We expect to share some of his research with you in a future newsletter.
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The plantation in Tsoxor started 10 years ago looks beautiful and shows that bamboo is ideally suited to counter erosion of Lake Volta. The bamboo holds the soil and provides production timber for local people.
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Timber World Practice Day
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The Dutch government wants to encourage timber construction in order to reduce our CO₂ emissions in the Netherlands. Currently, almost everything in the Netherlands is built with concrete and steel. The production of these materials involves very high CO₂ emissions. With wood, and also with bamboo, it is exactly the opposite, because with those materials CO₂ is absorbed and sequestered from the atmosphere. However, the question is whether you can use wood to build high-rise buildings, and the answer is yes. But this is far from common knowledge, let alone accepted in the construction world.
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'Houtwereld' is a magazine for Dutch woodworking companies. On 24 October last, Ruud Goedknegt was invited to speak at the Timber World Practice Day, together with Carel Wreesmann he went to the North Brabant town of Goirle.
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The editorial board of Houtwereld had organised the day as a networking meeting for their readers, who mainly work in the woodworking industry in the Netherlands. The turnout was overwhelming, more than 200 participants. Besides the exhibition area where several companies had set up their stands, 'industry talks' were held in the theatre hall. In these, three representatives from the timber industry were challenged to a discussion by the Houtwereld editor-in-chief Jan Maurits Schouten for half an hour each. At the end of this programme section 'Opportunities in Timber Production', Jan Maurits gave the floor to Ruud Goedknegt, who made a warm plea for the Barbarugo Foundation and the benefits of bamboo to a packed room. He concluded with an appeal to those present, that we are looking for an entrepreneur to set up a factory in Ghana to process bamboo locally.
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Strand Woven Bamboo (SWB)
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Bamboo is a grass, and that means that fibres run in the stems from top to bottom. These are particularly strong. Gluing them and pressing them together under very high pressure creates a composite material known as SWB (Strand Woven Bamboo), which is more durable than tropical hardwood.
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Unlike timber planks, beams of SWB hardly bend at all, which is why it is ideally, and better than timber, suited for high-rise buildings.
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In addition, buildings made of wood or bamboo are lighter in weight than concrete and steel, making them more resistant to earthquakes, among other things. We are in the process of gathering more knowledge on this application.
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Currently, China is the largest producer worldwide of bamboo. We have shown, that bamboo also wants to grow particularly nicely in Ghana. Bamboo also grows in our temperate climate in the Netherlands, but here this crop does not get higher than about 4 metres, whereas in Ghana it can easily reach a height of 20 metres.
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Processing bamboo creates a lot of biomass, often more than half of all harvested material. Fortunately, this can also be utilised. Our local partner in Tamale turns bamboo into excellent charcoal for the local market. The idea behind this is to offer an alternative to selling charcoal from illegally felled trees in Ghana with this bamboo charcoal.
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The future is bamboo!
We are hopeful, that the demand for bamboo will grow, leading to export opportunities for Ghanaian bamboo.
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Therefore, dear donors, don't let us down!
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It remains for us to wish you all a great year-end and a happy 2024.
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Until another newsletter.
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