By Melody Chikono
IT is a hot day in January in Guruve district, Mashonaland Central province and Patrick Muchengu, who is a proud owner of a bio-digester plant, passionately describes how he acquired the alternative energy source in 2017.
Muchengu, who also happens to be a councillor in the Guruve Rural District Council is, however, not happy that despite the knowledge villagers have received about the importance of using biogas as a climate change mitigation measure, he is the only one who has it in his ward.
According to Muchengu, the council used to run a revolving fund for setting up bio-digesters in rural Guruve, but it has since ceased, citing hyper-inflation.
Despite lack of collateral demands to access the fund, people were still reluctant to set up the plants due to high costs of setting up the digester.
Since 2017, when he started using the bio-digester, Muchengu has also been saddened by the fact that he hasn’t been able to find a suitable stove to use, saying the one he was using was not compatible and no longer functioning well, but he could not dump the digester because it would be expensive to restart it once left idle for a while.
“I got US$1 000 in 2017 from the council’s revolving fund. It was available for everyone. One only needed to have more than five cows and be trustworthy to qualify for the fund. The money would be repaid after one year. It is so unfortunate that I am the only one in my…
