The organisation “Macha Works” is active in an rural isolated community in Zambia named Macha. Consistent and sustainable energy supply will enable new medical, educational, agricultural and entrepreneurial solutions that the community needs to go for the next step of development. Within the area of Macha, less than 5% of the available land is used, mainly for small scale agricultural purposes. The owner of the mission compound (bishop) has asked Macha Works for support to develop the existing and non used part of the mission compound for the Jatropha plantation.
Jatropha project
Recently, the foundation Machaworks in cooperation with Energy4All started an investigation for energy supply in the rural areas of Zambia. Because of the growing local energy demand and high prices for diesel, there is a lack of affordable energy in Macha. Using biodiesel from local sources the demand can be met.
ecause of the growth of activities in Macha, additional infrastructure, such as water and energy supplies are absolutely necessary in order to continue growth. Macha is connected to the electricity network but outages are common.
The bio-oil plantation is located on 5 km2 of mission grounds where oil will be sustainably extracted from Jatropha trees. In April 2012, the farm will produce at least 250,000 litres of bio-oil for Macha. This will make Macha completely self-supporting in terms of energy and will decrease the import of expensive diesel oil. Apart from that, Jatropha offers many other advantages for a community including the prevention of soil erosion. The natural oil also provides economic opportunities for soap production and other local cosmetic products.
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