Recap day 1

Bamboo international workshop

Session 1 – opening session

• The workshop a joint effort - MEWNR, KEFRI, INBAR and KFS

• In the Vision 2030 – bamboo is recognised and seen as an important resource for this country

• There is need to raise awareness on the opportunities in the bamboo sector in Kenya and Africa

• Expectations – A good review of the status of the bamboo industry– Identify sector stakeholders– Identify ways to improve that coordination

Objectives and Expectations

• Overall objective: contribution to the development of national bamboo sector plan

• Specific objective:– Identify the policy and legislative gaps in support of bamboo

sector– Receive and learn from case studies and experiences– Raise awareness of key policy makers and investors to create a

more enabling policy and investment environment• Expected outputs

– The government to enact bamboo policy with multi-stakeholder support

– Increased investment and support in the sector– By 2030 the bamboo sector will be contributing significantly to

Kenya’s land restoration, renewable energy, poverty alleviation and industrial development goals

Session 2 – Policy

• Policy gaps listed and classified –– socio- economic, technical, logistical and policy

• Research needed to generate data to guide management, harvesting, utilisation and marketing

• Improve an diversify utilisation of bamboo

• Given lessons from China – Importance of long term and result based policies– Firm ownership of policy– Multi sector approach was highly beneficial

Session 3 – sustainable resource management and landscape restoration

• Looked at opportunities for restoration in Kenya – opportunities to map the bamboo species

• The current status of the bamboo planting material and field trials in Kenya– Lessons learnt is that some sites were pretty

inaccessible – need trial sites that area strategic• Bamboo tobacco replacement project – the

initiatives, and achievements

Session 4 – bamboo biomass for energy

• Given the opportunities of using bamboo for energy

• The yield per hectare• Can produce >500MW of renewable energy in

Kenya• Need to create polices to favour biomass

based power generators • Explored the development of PPP model for

bamboo biomass

Session 6: bamboo construction• Shown how bamboo can be used for

construction• There are published ISO standards • The Ministry of housing is looking at reviewing

the Nation al Housing policy to advocate for afforestation to ensure increased material available that includes bamboo other than just timber

• We were also exposed to initiatives of bamboo used in construction already in Kenya