Gertrude Arineitwe spreads out her green polythene bag at the charcoal shelter. The charcoal seller, a woman from whom Arineitwe has bought charcoal for the past four years and who has become a friend, empties a spadeful of charcoal into the bag. Black dust wafts in the air. Soot-colored pieces fall into the bag, clanging as they land. Arineitwe watches, waiting for the seller to add more. But she doesn’t. She’s done — and the bag is only half full.
Every day for the last seven years, Arineitwe has bought charcoal to brew bushera, a popular drink made by mixing sorghum flour and hot water, then letting the mixture cool overnight. She sells it to people in her neighborhood, Nansana, a fast-growing suburb of Kampala, especially to those who hail from western Uganda where culturally the drink is a luxury in every home.
Typically, she uses two spadesful of charcoal — around 4,000 Ugandan shillings’ (1 United States dollar’s) worth — to make her day’s brew. But now the same 4,000 shillings buys only half the amount. She considered increasing her prices to compensate for the high fuel costs, she says, but her clients said they’d stop buying from her if she did. Instead, she’s decreased her bushera production. And following last year’s ban on charcoal and firewood production in northern Uganda, which has driven prices even higher, she’s unsure what she’ll do for cooking fuel.
“I am worried for the future of my business,” she says.
Over the past few years, the Ugandan government introduced incentives to lure people away from using charcoal and firewood for their cooking and toward cleaner fuels. In 2020, the government waived the value-added tax on cooking gas, and a year later it implemented bulk rates for electricity where customers can buy large amounts for lower prices. Last year it began distributing gas cylinders to residents in Mukono and Wakiso districts in central Uganda near Kampala, the capital. But despite these efforts, around 94% of Ugandan households still cook with charcoal and firewood, also known as biomass.
Then in June 2023, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni signed an executive order banning commercial charcoal production and tree-cutting for firewood in northern Uganda, the leading supplier of charcoal in the country. The ban — an attempt to stop deforestation and reduce carbon emissions — made charcoal and firewood scarce and sparked price increases nationwide.
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This left people like Arineitwe in a bind. They are unable or unwilling to switch to different and cleaner cooking methods because the startup costs are unaffordable, the options confusing, and the cooking techniques unfamiliar and incompatible with traditional Ugandan cooking. At the same time, they can’t afford enough charcoal and firewood to fulfill their needs. They are in limbo and, as a result, are forced to slow down their businesses or halt them altogether.
Alternative fuels are too costly, Arineitwe says.
The prices of charcoal and firewood are double what they used to be, she says, but it is still less expensive for her to use them than to switch to electricity, which is accessible in her region. With the price hike, it costs her 14,000 shillings (3.5 dollars) to boil the 60 liters (nearly 16 gallons) of water a day that she needs to make her bushera.
In contrast, if she were to use electricity, it would cost her over 50,000 shillings (13 dollars) per day to boil 20 liters of water (about 5 gallons), just one-third of the amount she needs, because she can’t afford to buy enough to take advantage of bulk rates.
Before the price increase, she made a profit of around 30,000 shillings (7 dollars) per week, or 120,000 shillings (31 dollars) a month selling bushera.
“The meager profits I make in the business will all be spent on electricity,” she says.
She could buy an electric pressure cooker, which uses electricity more efficiently, but they are expensive and too small to be practical, she says. And even if larger cookers were available, she couldn’t afford one.
Now she only makes bushera for returning customers when they request it, Arineitwe says, typically for an event. And she asks them to provide the firewood and flour for her to make it.
The government hopes to transition the country away from charcoal and firewood for cooking by 2030, says Solomon Muyita, spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy
