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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Leading Ugandan waste management company Homeklin Uganda Ltd has announced plans to transform Kampala’s persistent garbage crisis into a commercial energy source through a new facility in Makindye division. In a technical partnership with the American firm Cenergy Solutions, Homeklin will begin converting the city’s organic refuse into compressed biogas cylinders and liquid biofertilizer.
The plans mark a strategic shift for the company from simple collection to sophisticated resource recovery and, most importantly, targets a critical failure in the capital’s infrastructure.
While Kampala generates approximately 730,000 tonnes of waste every year, KCCA data reveals that nearly half of that volume is never formally collected. This leaves hundreds of thousands of tonnes of organic material—which makes up about 70% of the city’s total waste—to rot in unauthorized dumpsites or burn in open-air fires.
“Waste is only waste if wasted,” said Isaac Katureebe, the founder and chief executive of Homeklin. He noted that the project is designed to intercept this organic stream and provide a scalable alternative to charcoal, the primary cooking fuel that has historically driven deforestation across Uganda.
The facility at Kevina Nsambya represents a significant experiment in the circular economy. By capturing methane from decaying organic matter and packaging it into portable cylinders, the project aims to support the government’s clean cooking agenda and reduce the respiratory health risks associated with wood-fire smoke.
The launch later this month, themed around waste transformation and climate resilience, will draw senior leadership from the Kampala Capital City Authority and international experts, including Cenergy Solutions CEO Gary Warren Fanger. Their involvement underscores a growing reliance on public-private partnerships to address urban sanitation gaps that have long outpaced municipal budgets.
Beyond the energy output, the plant will produce liquid biofertilizer, offering a byproduct that links urban waste management directly to agricultural productivity. As Uganda pursues its National Development Plan goals, the success of the Nsambya facility will likely serve as a benchmark for whether private capital can effectively monetize the externalities of rapid urbanization.
For the residents of a city frequently choked by uncollected refuse, the project offers a pragmatic path forward, officials said. By treating the city’s discarded organic matter as a raw material rather than a nuisance, Homeklin is attempting to prove that the solution to Kampala’s environmental decay has been sitting in its trash heaps all along.
