Kenyan innovator shows power of homegrown solutions
Rafiki wa Mazingira turn household and agricultural waste into an affordable, sustainable cooking fuel.
Worldwide, millions of displaced people go without clean, affordable energy. This can deny them the chance to study or earn a living – or force them to cook on dangerous, inefficient stoves and open fires.
In Kenya’s Kakuma Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, a refugee-led business is tackling this challenge. Rafiki wa Mazingira turn household and agricultural waste into an affordable, sustainable cooking fuel. This boosts the local economy, protects people’s health, lowers harmful emissions and brings degraded land back to life. These benefits are particularly important for women and girls, who are most likely to spend their time cooking or gathering firewood.
The company’s success and growth has been accelerated by Ashden, as part of the Transforming Humanitarian Energy Access programme. Our partnership with Rafiki wa Mazingira has important lessons for funders and the humanitarian sector. It shows the impact of empowering refugee-led organisations, and the need to devolve decision-making to those with local expertise.
From backyard startup to a team of 20
Rafiki wa Mazingira started as cottage industry in the yard of the founder’s home. Bajirenge Blaise Pascal and his wife pressed briquettes from waste, largely for personal use, selling any surplus to neighbours. He says: “We wanted to see if waste could become something useful for the community — and also provide a livelihood for ourselves.”
Bajirenge’s settlement, home to over 300,000 refugees, faces entrenched energy poverty. None of the settlement is connected to the national grid, and the host community’s electricity is supplied from a local diesel grid. Households rely on firewood or charcoal for cooking. These fuel sources are polluting, expensive, time-intensive and potentially dangerous to collect – women and girls, who are mostly responsible for gathering firewood, are exposed to the risk of violence.
How can protecting the land create a sustainable cooking fuel?
As Rafiki wa Mazingira grew, the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) invited the business to join efforts to eradicate the invasive tree species, Neltuma juliflora (formerly known as Prosopis juliflora). This fast-growing tree has accelerated desertification in the region, putting livestock at risk and making land unviable for agriculture. Now Rafiki wa Mazingira clears the Prosopis from areas KEFRI wishes to replant, and uses it in briquette production.
Rafiki wa Mazingira also received a donation of mechanised equipment from a programme funded by the International Labor Organization.
Although these diesel-powered machines grew production capacity, fuel costs were high and volatile. Rafiki wa Mazingira recall achieving revenues of Ksh 400,000 (approximately £2,300) in 2024, but using nearly 100 litres of diesel and 90 litres of petrol every month to power their operation. This burned through more than two-thirds of the company’s income and lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions.
Their new equipment was a big step up for the company. But with so much more raw material thanks to the KEFRI partnership, Rafiki wa Mazingira now had the potential to produce many more briquettes than their new machinery could process. Limited production capacity was holding back their growth.
Ashden support brings green tech, training, and higher productivity
In March 2025, Ashden invited Rafiki wa Mazingira to apply for support from the UK Government-funded Transforming Humanitarian Energy Access (THEA) programme. Under this programme, Ashden took a deliberately enabling approach: instead of prescribing solutions, Rafiki wa Mazingira was supported to define their own needs and organisational priorities. These included land, workshop space, solar-powered machinery, and suitable production line equipment.
With evidence that they would receive £25,000 cash support from Ashden, the company was able to negotiate with the camp management authorities for a much larger plot of land, finally moving out of the backyard production site where it had been working for the last four years. The business used its grant to build a dedicated workshop, install a solar power supply (ending diesel dependence), and buy an electric extruder that could produce up to three tonnes of briquettes per day.
Ashden supported the company founder, Bajirenge, to travel to Uganda for a peer learning exchange with a similar refugee-led enterprise, Live in Green. He spent a week learning about their operations and production line, and was able to work with their team to design and build the new electric equipment, tailored to Rafiki wa Mazingira’s supply of raw materials and production goals.
“The support we received from Ashden through the THEA programme changed everything for us. For the first time we were trusted to decide what works best for us in terms of the equipment and the system we need to grow. That space of freedom allowed us to come up with a production line that resonates and truly fits our reality here in Kakuma refugee camp.”
“Moving from a small backyard operation with limited equipment and a lot of operational challenges, to a fully solar-powered workshop, has transformed the scale and quality of our work. This is a powerful example of what refugee-led organisations can achieve when we are given the resources and the space to make our own decisions.”
Bajirenge, Founder
Immediate outcomes and community impact
With new equipment up and running, and solar power installed in September, production is already exceeding one tonne a day — a more than threefold increase from six months ago. With better economies of scale, and free electricity from the sun, Rafiki wa Mazingira can sell briquettes at prices competitive with traditional charcoal.
This makes them affordable for refugee households, and means the company can process bulk orders – attracting new institutional customers. The enterprise aims to hire more staff from the settlement, and will be able to pay significantly higher wages than the typical humanitarian cash-ration relied on by many households in Kakuma.
For local people, the benefits of Rafiki wa Mazingira’s growth include improved indoor air quality and reduced exposure to smoke from cooking, as well as new economic opportunities. Degraded land has been rehabilitated – and the switch to solar has lowered CO₂ emissions.
Insights for funders and the humanitarian sector
Rafiki wa Mazingira’s story illustrates two crucial lessons.
1. Refugee-led organisations are well-placed to deliver clean energy solutions.
They understand local conditions, community needs, and resource constraints. And as they are embedded in the communities they serve, they can leverage trust in the products and services they provide, promoting greater uptake and sustained use of these solutions.
2. Devolving decision-making to frontline organisations produces efficient, responsive and sustainable solutions.
By supporting Rafiki wa Mazingira to define its own pathway to scale, Ashden enabled ownership, relevance, and growth. Staff are now in the driving seat: for example, the company is negotiating its own contracts with suppliers and institutional off-takers, rather than relying on an NGO intermediary to do this on their behalf.
Rafiki wa Mazingira create impact in a region where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people face severe energy poverty. The organisation has used THEA funding to show that community-led, renewable energy enterprises can generate livelihoods, restore degraded landscapes, and provide cleaner, affordable energy for refugee households – all while fostering local economic development.
Watch this short film produced by Rafiki wa Mazingira to learn about their story and how they are scaling:
THEA REEA partners
THEA REEA supporters
This material was funded with UK aid from the UK government via the Transforming Energy Access programme, however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.