Côte d’Ivoire is a global producer of cocoa beans, cashew nuts, natural rubber and tropical fruits, the harvest of which produces huge amounts of agriculturalwaste. This contains calorific value for energy and minerals that could be cycled to replenish degraded soils. Biogas is a by-product from this process, which can be captured for cooking. Yet this agricultural waste is often burnt, releasing potent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

LONO has developed community-scale, clean technologies to transform agricultural waste and by-products into compost, biogas, animal feed and biofuels. They work with agro-industrial companies and farmer cooperatives to create value out of their waste and by-products. LONO operates in rural communities to reduce transport costs and ensure easy access to the customers who need their solutions the most. LONO has two different models. First, they produce patented, domestic scale, prefabricated composters and digesters for farmers to process their own biowaste. Their outreach team visits farmers and advises on how to enhance the compost to suit their soil and crops. Second, LONO partners with medium-sized factories to build industrial scale biowaste composting and biodigestion units and thereby avoid waste incineration. Revenue generated from the facility is shared between LONO and their clients. As part of this model, LONO is setting up a compost brand to sell their biofertilisers. LONO has received a number of grants to develop their prefabricated equipment and a larger grant for industrial scale production, which they are now co-financing. They carry out their lab tests and field trials for biogas output and compost quality in a dedicated local laboratory, in partnership with Yamoussoukro Polytechnic.

This case study has been created as part of Footprints Africa's work to build the first ever comprehensive mapping of circular economy initiatives in Africa. This will lay the foundation open-source database that can inspire local initiatives, as well as inform the global dialogue, which is largely focused on the European and American contexts. We are doing this in collaboration with the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN). ACEN's vision is to build a restorative African economy that generates well-being and prosperity inclusive of all its people through new forms of economic production and consumption which maintain and regenerate its environmental resources.

The objective is to build an open-source database featuring 500 cases by the end of 2021, with strong regional representation. These will feature in the Knowledge Hub and are also being mapped by GRID-Arendal.