Biochar Industrial Group (BIG), a company developing industrial-scale carbon removal solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, announced that it has secured $1.5 million in a seed funding round.
The funding will enable the company to grow its biochar-as-a-service model, through which it helps food processing factories convert waste into CO2 removal solutions.
BIG’s operations address three separate problems simultaneously, including food waste management, carbon emissions, and soil degradation in farming-heavy regions of Africa.
By partnering with Biochar Industry Group, African food processing facilities gain access to an additional, biochar-based source of revenue.
Led by BREEGA, the seed funding round saw participation from The Catalyst Fund, while The Mulago Foundation backed the company with non-dilutive funding. This financial injection will help BIG grow its network of food processing partnerships.
Africa is said to currently produce 1 billion tons of non-edible agricultural biomass annually, such as nut shells, cobs, husks, and stalks. When waste like this is left to decompose in open air, it releases significant amounts of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Additionally, the bustling agricultural activity on this continent is impacting cultivating land, which is being degraded by overuse and synthetic fertilizers, stripping 30-60 kilograms of nutrients from every hectare each year.
Estimates say that by 2050, half of Africa’s arable land could be unusable, creating a harsh reality that would impact over 485 million people.
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Biochar Industrial Group’s win-win approach
BIG is working with a technology that helps address these problems. The company partners directly with food processors, providing them with on-site pyrolysis systems that convert low- or negative-value waste into biochar.
This process permanently traps CO2 for hundreds to thousands of years, generating independently auditable, high-integrity carbon removal credits.
The resulting biochar product, in turn, serves as a vital soil amendment that helps restore depleted farmland. When applied to Africa’s acidic, tropical soils, controlled field trials showed that BIG’s biochar led to yield increases of up to 50%.
Ikenna Nzewi, CEO of Biochar Industrial Group, commented, “By forming true win-win partnerships with agricultural processors to produce biochar, we have the opportunity to turn localised waste liabilities into a transformative global solution.”
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