Stu’s Travel Diary

10/2022 — Bolgatanga, Upper East Region, Ghana

There are many beautiful places in Ghana. This is not one of them.

I’ve just arrived at the municipal dump outside Bolgatanga. When I step out of the car, the smell hits me right away

— rolling off the heaps of garbage in the morning heat.

But not just garbage. Raw sewage, too.

I’m grateful to step inside a small, concrete building. In it, iDE is piloting a new project: turning human waste into safe, marketable compost!

Black soldier fly larvae feed on the waste and as they do, it turns into a harmless compost. Then, it’s dried, processed and sold as nutrient-rich food for soil!

But, it’s still early days. Right now, we only have two 1,000 litre tanks to store and process the waste.

Eventually, we’ll need a way to process 700,000 litres every month! Numbers like that are why this experiment is so important. If successful, it can solve major problems in the area.

Like significantly reducing the amount of dangerous bacteria in the environment — the kind that’s currently making people in Bolgatanga really sick. Or, like helping small-scale farmers improve their soil quality, grow more produce and make a regular income!

Your generosity makes inventive projects like these — projects that help transform the lives of people living in poverty around the world — possible. Thank you!