REFFECT AFRICA will start on November 01, 2021 and runs for a period of five years until November 01, 2026.
Basic informations
Coordinator
The project will be coordinated by the Universidad de Jaén (UJA), Spain.
Participating countries
The project involves 29 partners from 16 different countries. These include universities, research institutions and companies from Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Germany, Norway, Italy and Portugal.
Main activities
Tasks to perform: Prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
REFFECT AFRICA
Renewable energies for Africa: effective valorization of agri-food wastes
Specific challenge
Africa still faces major challenges related to ensuring access to reliable energy for all and beyond, to the development of its industrial base to create much-needed jobs. The multi-faceted African continent has an enormous renewable energy potential which just began to be harnessed successfully.
Thus the adoption of innovative, affordable and efficient renewable energy solutions will support Africa in achieving sustainable development growth and economic transformation.
Against this background the REFFECT AFRICA project will start.
Objectives
The overall objective of REFFECT AFRICA is to define, validate and demonstrate a successful biomass valorization technology for the production of energy and biochar. One project plant will be
built at each of three different sites in Africa (located in Morocco, Ghana and South Africa), primarily for the production of electricity, heat and biochar.
These products form the basis for the development of further technical applications and processes that take account of the Water-Energy-Food cycle: Cheap electricity produced with local biomass wastes, an increase in fertility and agricultural output obtained closing local nutrient loops, and an improvement on health through the access to safe drinking water and services like sterilization of surgical materials.
The steps foreseen for this are:
- Development of renewable energy sources, providing solutions for on-grid and off-grid communities, and their integration into the existing energy system
- Working on obtaining biochar from the gasifier, which will be improved to provide a valuable fertilizer to local farmers
- Inclusion of a robust but reliable water laboratory to provide their location with basic but often lacking testing services for their drinking and irrigation water
Ankron's contribution
Our task in this project will be to develop the basics for the water laboratories, to provide the appropriate equipment and to develop suitable analytical methods.
We have to establish validated water laboratories that operate safely in terms of quality, take into account the particular site's water quality requirements, and provide both technically and economically scalable models for additional sites in the long term.
Project updates
April 2025: Tuna in Ghana is ready to analyze
In April we proudly completed our largest project milestone yet: We successfully installed and commissioned a drinking water purification system and established a fully operational water laboratory in Tuna, Ghana.
After intensive preparation in Germany, Ahmed Mohammed travelled to Ghana to carry out the installation and final commissioning of the drinking water treatment system on site and to set up the laboratory for water analysis using the best possible state-of-the-art technology for this location.
This achievement marks a transformative step for the community, enabling them to produce safe drinking water and conduct water analysis—powered by the innovative biogasification plant at the demo
site.
July 2025: Inauguration of the Cape Town demo site
