Development and the Environment in Tanzania

When we visited Tanzania earlier this summer, we were struck by how much recent development has impacted the environment, mostly in a negative way. This has motivated us even more to make sure we are incorporating and promoting sustainability as much as possible in everything we do at Twegashe Primary School. More on that later, but first some of our observations…

Solar Energy

On the positive side, solar panels are now everywhere. Shops in town advertise solar systems for sale, the village medical clinic has a few panels to supply lighting for their overnight ward, and at least one home in the village has a solar panel on the roof to provide lighting at night. In other homes, small solar lanterns seem to be largely replacing the traditional blue kerosene lanterns and the small makeshift kerosene lamps fashioned from old tin cans that used to be common. On sunny afternoons you can see these solar lanterns charging on porches everywhere.

Although solar is the only electricity option in Bushasha village, homes along the main road five miles away do have access to the grid. According to TanzaniaInvest.com, 24% of all Tanzanians have access to electricity from the grid, but only 7% of rural Tanzanians are connected. Most grid power (58%) comes from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas. The remainder comes from hydro. A private girls’ school we visited near town, where electricity from the grid is available, had installed sets of solar-powered lights in addition to grid-connected lights in each classroom. Their prime motivation was to have a backup when the power is down, but at least their backup is “green”!

Waste Management

Waste management scored far more negatives than positives on the environmental-friendliness scale. In Bushasha village, and most likely in other villages as well, there is no formal system for waste management. Trash is either buried or burned by each individual household. Fortunately, most village households still don’t generate a lot of non-biodegradable trash, but the amount of plastic trash has increased considerably over the past two decades. There were many occasions when an acrid smokiness tinged the air–either trash burning somewhere or the burning of plant material removed from fields in preparation for planting.

We saw some disturbing waste-management practices while traveling in other parts of Tanzania. Worst was a huge dump just on the edge of the city of Mwanza, with possibly the most terrible widely-distributed stench I’ve ever experienced. Most troubling was the fact that there were many people living very close by, and not in the kind of homes where odors can be shut out by closing the windows. Along the road in a few other large towns we saw piles of burning trash, clearly including lots of plastics. The fumes this produced must have been terribly unhealthy for those living nearby.

Recycling

One glimmer of hope in the waste-management arena was a large net bag full of plastic water bottles we saw next to a municipal trash pile in one of the towns we passed through. Our assumption is that these were being removed from the trash so they could be recycled. There definitely is some amount of recycling practiced in Tanzania, because at the same private girls’ school mentioned above the student environment club was engaged in a project to collect bottles for recycling.

But certainly far bigger than recycling, especially in villages, is reusing. Small plastic bottles are reused to store cooking ingredients, larger containers are used for hauling water, old tires are transformed into flipflops, and plastic bags are re-used until they are torn, at which point they might end up wrapped tightly together with lots of other expired bags and used as a substitute for a soccer ball. Village kids may soon need to go back to using banana leaves for this purpose, since Tanzania is poised to follow its neighbors Rwanda and Kenya with a ban on plastic shopping bags.

Transportation

Negative impacts of development on the environment in Tanzania were probably most noticeable in the area of transportation. Cars and motorcycles clog the streets in towns and cities, many of them belching smoke. Tanzania has phased out leaded gasoline, and sulfur content is regulated, but routine inspections for emissions control are not required, and diesel vehicles are common. Air quality on the streets was so bad in some places that it made breathing difficult. Public transportation, at least in the Bukoba region, is non-existent. Private buses make long runs between large towns, but between town and village the only option is taxis. Within towns, the transportation mode of choice is the Tanzanian version of Uber, the “pikipiki” or motorcycle. No need for an app to call a ride–the drivers are swarming around everywhere just waiting for a sign that someone needs a lift. These pikipikis are now common even in the village. Where just ten years ago villagers walked the five miles to the main road to hail a taxi, now anyone who can afford fifty cents will get a ride on a pikipiki instead.

Wood As Fuel

The other main air-quality culprit, cooking fires, has unfortunately not been impacted much by development, at least not in the village. Almost all families in Bushasha village still cook on open wood fires, with all the accompanying health risks of excessive smoke exposure, including pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. For more on the health risks, see the WHO fact sheet Household Air Pollution and Health. Other alternatives such as kerosene and propane are available and used in town, but the expense of such fuels for villagers is prohibitive.

In addition to air quality impacts, the reliance on wood fuel contributes significantly to deforestation. Cooking with wood is not the only source of this problem. Wood is also used in the firing of locally made mud bricks. As more and more villagers abandon the old mud and stick style of home and the use of sun-dried bricks in favor of kiln-fired bricks, the stress on local forests grows.

Our School and Sustainability

For most ordinary people in Tanzania, and for everyone living in villages like Bushasha, decisions about what to do with household trash, how to travel, how to cook, and how to build their homes are dictated by practical realities. People don’t have the luxury of making choices based on environmental impact when they are struggling just to get by. Our aim as we build and operate Twegashe Primary School is to try to raise environmental conscientiousness among the local people, to set a good example, and whenever possible to introduce the use of environmentally friendly techniques that are also economical, in hopes that some of these techniques may be eventually be adopted more widely.

One example is in our choice of construction materials. We are planning to build the school using stabilized soil blocks (SSBs), also known as compressed earth blocks (CEBs), made by adding a small amount of cement to soil and then compressing it into block form with a hand-operated press. The cement coupled with the compression stabilizes and strengthens the blocks to the extent that they don’t need to be fired. Our plan is to purchase a block press and when school construction is complete make the press available to local brick-makers for a small fee. We also plan to implement a recycling program based at our school and open to the entire community.

We are exploring other ideas for incorporating appropriate sustainable technologies in our school infrastructure, including composting toilets, biogas or solar for cooking, and windpower for pumping water. There are no easy solutions, and we are always looking for new ideas and new expertise. If you have any input that you think might be helpful, please get in touch. Click here for our contact page and contact information.