Since January 1, 2019, firewood has not been supplied to refugee camps, rather it was replaced by cooking gas, and pellets, Olivier Kayumba, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry in charge of Emergency Management, told a consultative meeting on cooking energy.

The meeting held on Friday, November 27, 2020, was discussing how to shift from biomass (firewood and charcoal) use as cooking energy to clean cooking energy solutions such as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), biogas and electricity.

Kayumba said that the move followed resolution 5 of the National Leadership Retreat of 2017, which called for sensitising Rwandans and setting up sound mechanisms for them to use gas and other modern environmentally-friendly energy sources for cooking in households as well as in schools, prisons and other big institutions.

For sustainable management of natural resources and environment, Rwanda targets to have the number of households depending on firewood as a source of energy for cooking from 79.9 per cent in 2017 to 42 per cent by 2024.

"In the Mahama Camp – which is the largest refugee camp in Rwanda] accommodating about 60,000 refugees or 20,000 households, they all use gas for cooking,” he said, explaining that two households share a cylinder containing six kilogrammes of LPG.

For refugees in other camps, he said that they use pellets.

"There is a shortage of trees in Mahama and the entire Eastern Province,” he said, pointing out that reducing wood-based fuel can protect the environment and help mitigate deforestation induced disasters.

CP George Rumanzi, Commissioner for Operations and Public Order at Rwanda National Police (RNP) said that the Force stopped using firewood or charcoal two years ago.

"RNP’s mobile units also use the cooking gas when they go to peacekeeping missions in the region,” he said.

The Logistics Division Manager at Rwanda Correctional Service (RCS), ACP Camille Gatete said that RCS as one of the big institutions with a large population in prisons was among large consumers of firewood in the country.

However, he indicated that RCS significantly reduced the use of firewood as of the 13 prisons in the country, 10 were using over 19,300 steres (cubic metres) of firewood per year.

He added that only three of the prisons were using briquettes (2,900 tonnes per year). The briquettes are mainly made from husks removed from paddy rice.

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottles at a shop in Remera, Gasabo District on June 13. File.

As of July 2020, he said, only two prisons are using firewood and the wood consumption reduced by about six times from 19,300 steres to 3,200 steres; while the briquettes use increased from 2,900 tonnes to 11,600 tonnes by 11 prisons per year.

In addition, he said that prisons also use biogas, which accounts for over 34 per cent of fuel; briquettes 61 per cent, while firewood accounts for 4 per cent.

"We are happy that we were able to cut firewood consumption in prisons to save forests over the last four years,” he said, adding that consultants from the Ministry of Infrastructure are supporting RCS to carry out a study on the use of LPG.

Martin Masabo, the Principal of Lycée de Kigali, said that the school which has about 1,500 students has been using cooking gas for three years since 2017.

He said that the use of firewood to cook at school was emitting smoke which was negatively impacting communities.

"Gas is cost-effective,” he said adding that the school used firewood worth Rwf7.5 million per term and spend almost the same amount on gas, yet gas ensures cleanliness in the kitchen and saves time.

The Minister of Environment, Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, said the examples from MINEMA, RNP, RCS, and Lycée de Kigali prove that adopting clean cooking energy is possible.

"If the use of cooking gas was achieved in a refugee camp with 20,000 households, it is possible that every household [in Rwanda] can get gas,” she said adding that the Government did it best to reduce the cost of gas.

Rwanda expects to start extracting cooking gas from Lake Kivu in 2021.