Zimbabwe’s communal milk collection centres through a USAID-funded WE4F Project

Zimbabwe has been implementing a number of measures to boost productivity within the dairy sector over the past few years. These measures include improving the breed of dairy cows through artificial insemination as well as setting up of communal milk collection centres around the country in order to increase milk collection and processing, as well dairy farmers’ access to markets. To date, 45 milk collection centres have been set up through various government and donor-funded initiatives. Zimbabwe needs between 120-130 million litres of milk annually. Currently, the production level is estimated at below 80 million litres and the government of Zimbabwe is putting in place these measures in order to increase milk production to 108 million litres by the end of 2023 and to 150 million litres by the year 2025.

GreenTEC Energy seeks to complement these efforts by introducing renewable energy in the form of biogas at communal milk collection centres through a project dubbed, ‘Greening Zimbabwe’s communal milk collection centres, for a sustainable dairy industry project”. GreenTEC Energy is partnering with key farmer organizations including the Zimbabwe Association for Dairy Farmers (ZADF), The Zimbabwe Dairy Industry Trust (ZDIT) and the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) to build biogas digesters at selected communal milk collection centres in order to reduce their dependence of conventional electricity for key operations requiring heating, cooling or refrigeration. The biogas plants will make use of organic waste generated at these milk collection and processing centres and dairy cattle dung supplied by dairy farmers who are members of the cooperatives that run these milk collection centres. The intervention will involve the construction of the biogas digesters and supply of supportive equipment, including small electricity generators, biogas refrigerators and biogas burners for use at the milk collection centres. The biogas plants will also be designed to retain and recycle water which can be used at the milking centres thereby reducing the extraction of freshwater resources.