 My name is Anna Janssen. I'm design lead in the Displacement Unit based in Nairobi. The Displacement Unit is a team that supports mission with innovations related to displaced population. And the project that I'm presenting today is a collaboration with the Nigeria Mission. So in the next 10 minutes, I'll tell you about biochar briquettes as an alternative cooking fuel and an assessment we are doing in Polka and Gauza in Nigeria. I was to co-present with Benjamin Moutizo, the deputy head of mission. Unfortunately, due to logistic reasons with his visa, he couldn't be here. But luckily, he is here with us through a small video, halfway the presentation. So Nigeria, the context. More specifically, Borno State in the northeast of Nigeria, where MSF has operations since 2012. If not for MSF operations, you probably have seen it in the news in the past years because of the kidnapping of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram. There's an ongoing conflict between Nigeria military and non-state armed groups, which forced about 2 million people from their homes. These displaced populations are now hosted in enclave, secured by the Nigeria military. It's very tricky to go outside, for example, to fetch firewood. People risk gender-based violence, abductions, and killings. So this is the starting point of our project. How might we reduce the number of victims of violence related to the fetching of firewood? With the displacement unit, as in all projects, we take a human-centric design approach already discussed a bit by Nan and Ben, a creative problem-solving approach with beneficiaries, the end users, always at the center of the development process from beginning to end. So together with the communities of Goza and Boko and the MSF teams on the ground, we started exploring possible solutions. One of the potential solutions were briquettes. I have one here. It's combustible blocks made of biomaterials. These materials can be sugarcane, grasses, groundnut shells, leftovers that are available within the camps. An individual can press them in a simple press and make blocks out of them to make cooking fuel without spending money, and moreover, without going outside of the camps. This is a technology known and also used in other contexts. But can we apply it in MSF emergency contexts? This was the question. So in October 2017, Michael, here at the right top of the picture, went to Boko and Goza to explore what is the potential of this solution in our context. Can machines be locally made by artisans? Yes. Is there available materials? We found plenty. Is the community interested in this kind of new way of making fuel? They did show an interest. So this was positive. But as we learned with innovation, there's a lot of challenges ahead as well. So we found many. The number one concern of people cooking was the smoke, which you can see on the top right. There's quite a lot of smoke when cooking with the briquettes. Also, the blocks were quite big. And we saw when people started preparing the tea for cooking that they would break them. So they didn't fit really with the current cooking style they did. And the real lower point, when we came back, we found the machine broken and unused in the corner. As you can imagine, a disappointment for us, but also an encouragement to think further, okay, how can we adapt this system, this product to the local community needs? And Benjamin will say a short word on that. Oh, let me see if I can get it working. Sorry. My name is Benjamin Mutisso. I'm the Deputy Head of Mission for MSF Spain Mission in Nigeria. In October 2017, after discussions with the Displacement Unit, they came with a prototype to manufacture the briquettes inside the secure zone. This was a very great idea. And the community were very interested in it. But it was quite expensive to implement it. And also it meant that the community was going to change their cooking behaviors. In April 2018, the Displacement Unit came back. This time the briquettes were user-friendly. The way to make them was user-friendly. And also it was cheap. And also to avoid a lot of smoke during the time when the people are cooking, the briquette material was carbonized before making the briquettes. Yeah, so as Benjamin introduced, we made quite a few changes. So from this bulky model with mechanical moving parts, we came to this model that I have over here. You can have a look at it afterwards as well. Simpler. And because it doesn't have the moving parts, it's less easy to break. Also the cost went down from $25 to $20 for the model on the left to less than $2.5 on the right. The briquettes are now smaller coming out, so they fit better in the stoves. And most importantly, we added one step, a carbonization step of the material before making the briquettes. This reduces the amount of smoke that people experience when cooking. And also it increases the cooking time. It has a higher carbonization effect. So let me quickly show you step by step how it works. You have the raw materials collected. You put it in a carbonizing drum. You put the material on fire. And when it smokes for about one minute, you close the lid so the oxygen is killed and the fire goes out. Depending on the material that you use, you leave it there for one to three hours. And something looking like this called char comes out. Char, whatever material you have used, always needs a binder. For this, we use cardboard soaked in water. The cardboard is available through the WFP food distribution. And mixed with the char, you can start pressing, entering it in here, start hammering. I think it's just too low. You hammer a bit. You take the briquette out, leave it drying for two to three days, and then you can start cooking. So that's for the technology. We tried, based on some first learnings from the community to optimize it. And now we want to test it on a bigger scale. So we have selected 600 households, 300 in Polka, 300 in Goza. And we will monitor it starting the first week of June for three months how this usage goes. So there's a central carbonizing place where all the 300 households in each place will be trained for the first 10 days. They will receive a press and a locally available jiggle and take it home. Then from day 11 on, 20 households can come every day to the place to carbonize. They bring their own materials in the bags that are also given to them, the raw materials. They carbonize it here. And at the end of the day, they take the char home. At their homes, they soak the cardboard and they mix it with the char and they can start making the briquettes. Within this 90 days, every 20 households has four times more or less the opportunity to come to the carbonizing site and produce briquettes sufficiently. Our estimations made for two weeks each time. So this is the carbonization site, just to recap a bit. This is the material that they bring. The bags will be given to them when they get an invitation by the community health promoters. The press and the stove called the jiggle and then at home, they can start making their own stoves. So what do we want to learn after these 90 days? First of all, do people use it when the possibility is given? Or if people not use it, why not? What are the barriers in the model? Should we change the model to make it more attractive? Do we indeed see a decrease in people going outside of the secured enclaves and therewith hopefully a decrease in patients of victims of violence? So that's the primary goal. But secondary also, do other models evolve? For example, this press, it's not so easy to, it's not so difficult to make it locally. Do people start producing them themselves? Do people maybe start making, selling the briquettes? So to learn a bit like what does it mean introducing a service or a product like this? So what's next? The bigger scale, the bigger picture. Well, for this place in Pulca and Goza, we have spoken with the Dullamas, the community leaders, and they will take over the sites after the 90 days. Then we have spoken with actors around in Nigeria itself who deal with protection and energy and they show the willingness to take over and scale up the initiative when indeed the community shows interest. So this case study and the materials and the implementation models that come along, we will use it at an advocacy tool for other actors to use. And also it's an invitation. I would be very happy to share this with other missions within MSF because we know that firewood is and will remain an issue for victims of violence, but also conflict between host community and incoming refugees or deforestation where the government might put restriction on the collection of firewood. So either it can be used as an advocacy tool in other missions or we could do it as part of our non-food distribution. Thank you very much to all of the team who collaborated giving the opportunity to sell the mission, the projects to explore this new initiative and to learn from what's coming out. And of course, thanks for the communities which in this session I cannot miss, of course. All right, thank you.