The International Labour Organization (ILO), in partnership with Olam Agri, ANADER, and Yanayi, and with financial backing from the Japanese government, has launched a successful biochar initiative in the Tchologo region of northern Côte d’Ivoire. This collaborative project centers on restoring degraded agricultural lands and generating sustainable, green employment. By integrating biocharBiochar is a carbon-rich material created from biomass decomposition in low-oxygen conditions. It has important applications in environmental remediation, soil improvement, agriculture, carbon sequestration, energy storage, and sustainable materials, promoting efficiency and reducing waste in various contexts while addressing climate change challenges. More production and utilization into local farming practices, the initiative is effectively translating a climate-smart technology into tangible economic opportunities, proving biochar’s potential as a catalyst for community-level development and resilience in West Africa.

The primary challenge addressed by the project was the intertwined issue of severe land degradation and pervasive rural poverty. Years of intensive farming and shifting climate patterns had led to diminishing soil fertility, resulting in unreliable harvests and a persistent lack of financial autonomy for smallholder producers, particularly women. Farmers in communities like Bakounadivogo needed a sustainable intervention that could not only rehabilitate soil health for staple crops like cotton but also create a pathway for stable, independent revenue generation beyond traditional agricultural outputs.

The core of the solution involved a strategic capacity-building and resource-provision effort. The ILO-led project delivered comprehensive training on biochar manufacturing, empowering local farmers to utilize readily available agricultural waste to create a high-value, carbon-negative soil amendmentA soil amendment is any material added to the soil to enhance its physical or chemical properties, improving its suitability for plant growth. Biochar is considered a soil amendment as it can improve soil structure, water retention, nutrient availability, and microbial activity.   More. Crucially, this training was paired with the provision of essential equipment, including specialized mobile pyrolyzers, crushers, tricycles, and necessary farming tools. This distribution of infrastructure enables efficient, local, and decentralized production, effectively turning a waste stream into a circular economic asset for the community.

The outcomes have been immediately impactful, demonstrating biochar’s dual ecological and socioeconomic benefits. Farmer beneficiaries have reported concrete results, citing improved plant development and the expectation of significantly increased cotton yields. More significantly, the project has created a new class of rural entrepreneurship; one female association president reported achieving financial independence by producing and selling the biochar-based soil amendments. This successful model establishes biochar as a powerful mechanism for both enhanced agricultural productivity and the creation of resilient, local green jobs, while simultaneously serving as a crucial tool for climate change mitigation.

The success of this comprehensive collaboration in Côte d’Ivoire provides a clear lesson for the global biochar industry: strategic public-private partnerships are paramount for scalable impact. The involvement of public bodies like the ILO and ANADER, alongside private sector actors like Olam Agri and Yanayi, ensured both technical legitimacy and vital market connection. The focus on local, decentralized production using simple pyrolyzers and agricultural waste demonstrates that biochar implementation can be an agile, community-scale strategy for achieving both carbon removal and tangible socioeconomic development objectives simultaneously.