by The fight against climate change demands that nations decarbonise their energy grids, but this transition puts contradictory pressures on many Global South countries. For instance, charcoal is the primary energy source for households in Tanzania and Uganda, dictating the social and political economy of livelihoods, gender relations, informal economies, ethnic relations and private sector growth. A sudden transition away from charcoal risks overlooking such complex dynamics.
To investigate these structures, Copenhagen University has partnered with Makerere University, Uganda, and St. Augustine University of Tanzania—receiving Danida funding for a four-year project (2023–2027) called Charcoal Conflict in Climate Change’s Decarbonisation Dilemmas: Knots of Livelihood, Nutrition, Communities, Gender, Migration & Energy in East Africa. The project includes extensive fieldwork in Tanzania and Uganda and aims to shape ideas on climate justice and global policies by centring voices from the Global South.
The initiative is led by Ole Wæver, Professor of Political Science at Copenhagen University and head of the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC).
DDRN recently interviewed Dr Susan Mlangwa, post-doctoral research fellow for the Charcoal Conflict project and lead investigator, Tanzania, part-time lecturer at St. Augustine University, and deputy country director for Tanzania at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, as well as Dr Sylvie Namwase, lead investigator for Uganda, lecturer at Makerere University School of Law, and post-doctoral research fellow at the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), Makerere University.
This is the second research collaboration between Dr Wæver and Dr Namwase. They previously cooperated on a project on militarisation, sustainable growth and peace in Uganda, which concluded in 2024.
The importance of studying charcoal consumption in Tanzania and Uganda
Q: So, Dr Susan, you notified the team about the call for proposals?
Dr Mlangwa: Yes. Some of my colleagues, actually past colleagues of my late husband, would always send me calls for such projects. And, this time, when they shared a call, I remembered that Sylvie was working in Denmark. So why not give it a try?
After finishing my PhD, I worked with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs as the head of research and evaluation and continued to work on projects advancing [human] agency in terms of [disease] prevention behaviour. Not only through what we get from institutions, NGOs, hospitals and educators. But also what the peoples’ prevention initiatives themselves say about those interventions. Rather than imposing a change in social behaviour, you should actually work with the people themselves to understand how it can work better.
When we conceived this project, I saw myself looking at the same area of my expertise: How are the people navigating energy transitions? Are they doing it through what they’ve been told to do, or is there a level of agency going on?
Dr Namwase: It’s a lot that we are unpacking. It is the dilemmas of the energy transition within the broader context of climate change and we are exploring these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective.
It’s three universities, and each team is bringing a unique perspective. The University of Copenhagen, specifically the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts [CRIC], brings the international relations perspective. Then we have the Makerere University School of Law, specifically under the Human Rights and Peace Centre [HURIPEC], bringing the law and policy perspective. St. Augustine University in Tanzania provides the sociological, anthropological, conflict and geographical lens to the problem.
By acknowledging that, yes, we have a problem. We are destroying our environment. And, yes, on the other hand, there is a problem if the voices that are working for good, although unintentionally, end up enacting results that are oppressive. We need an intermediate discussion, discourse. This is why this project is important. It will provide the space for that discourse.
Q: Do you have any preliminary findings?
Dr Mlangwa: It is a bit too early to be conclusive. So, the preliminary results will basically only be from observations in Uganda.
We are seeing that these things are really intertwined at the micro level. You see that communities are heavily relying on firewood and charcoal due to affordability and accessibility. But when you look at the regional and national level you find things like government bans on charcoal production and attempts to cut deforestation that create economic hardship for those dependent communities. We see governments using the police in policy enforcement to regulate charcoal production. But, at the same time, it encounters things like corruption and weak institutional capacity. At the macro level, charcoal production contributes to carbon emissions and climate change. This is also a fact.
The way I see the data, it’s material that, on the one hand, is systemic and, then, on the other hand, is nested—meaning that it builds on each other. If you want to come up with policies which will work you have to do a multi-level analysis. This needs an interdisciplinary approach.
“If the government is going to impose a total ban on charcoal, it’s almost as if they just want to kill us”
Dr Namwase: We have been very deliberate in speaking to cultural institutions and then also to communities that practice particular cultural aspects tied to the question of production and use of charcoal vis a vis preservation of specific tree species. We are also being deliberate on language to maintain the local language and references. And, of course, we are also very intentional about reflexivity.
In fact, early on, before we went to the field, we had a methodology and epistemological seminar as a multidisciplinary team, where each side shared key aspects to look out for that are common in their own fields so that we could all learn from each other.
In summation, the initial findings [from the legal perspective] are that the government and the state are using top-down militarist approaches, which are resulting in injustice and dispossession for quite a number of people. It is not engaging and offering alternative and affordable alternatives for these communities, and to a large extent, women are being particularly affected by these bans. Once the bans are put in place, what happens, as Dr Susan said, is that charcoal production does not stop. It continues.
Because of the additional burden of bribing the numerous police and military officers you find on the way, [charcoal] ends up becoming expensive once it reaches Kampala. That then affects the profit margin of women [selling food at markets] and the youth, by the way, as well. Youth are also engaging in businesses that rely on charcoal. For instance, Rolex-making. I don’t know if you know about Rolex. It’s a special street food here in Uganda, which consists of chapati and fried egg. It is a very popular food among the youth because it’s cheap and affordable.
And there is no room for people to negotiate and say, “Maybe give us more time” or “Where are the alternatives?”. In fact, what we found in quite a number of cases is that there is a sense of despair. Because on two or three occasions, we’ve had respondents saying that “if the government is going to impose a total ban on charcoal, it’s almost as if they just want to kill us”.
Research Aims
Q: Is the aim for your research findings to be translated into policy?
Dr Namwase: There is flexibility in what we can produce in terms of outputs. So, for instance, policy briefs are not out of the question. We should also have policy briefs at the end, with which we engage the key stakeholders—the ministries [in Tanzania and Uganda].
Then the whole point, of course, is also getting people to move away from charcoal because, ultimately, we want to protect the environment. Uganda and Tanzania are losing a lot of forest cover. But we want it to be done in a fair way, in a way that is not dispossessing people. That is not forcing them into a state of despair where they feel left behind by their governments. So we are aiming for the whole package if I’m to say that. Influencing policy, but also getting people to transition in a fair way, with energy justice in mind.
Dr Mlangwa: I think that’s correct. We actually looked at the whole package. We aim for people to move away from the energies which are harmful to them healthwise and environmentally. We intend to trigger action-oriented programs and projects through the dissemination of our results. We hope it can trigger collaborations, initiatives and interventions with the different players in this space.
We are also anticipating that, from our results, there can be some kind of reorganisation of the discourse not only in the academic world but also in the international organisations, the ones dealing with climate. [Our results] can also trigger a re-examination of how the whole issue of climate mitigation and implementation has been going and how it can change for the better with more voices from the Global South. That’s also a very keen aim of ours, to change the discourse in these international spaces.
Research cooperation between the Global North and South
Q: Switching focus now. What are the main strengths of research partnerships between countries in the Global North, Denmark in this case, and the Global South?
Dr Namwase: The main strength of such partnerships is, first and foremost, the logistics. We are in contexts where research is maybe not as much of a priority for our governments as other competing interests and needs. So funds are being channelled into other things and yet new knowledge is required to inform policy. Collaborations such as this open up access to funds that allow us to do meaningful work by going on the ground and interacting with the affected communities.
Also, secondly, is the cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines. It’s an opportunity to enrich each other because we can learn from the Danish way of doing things, which I must say I really admire. And I think that is somehow rubbing off on us. At least I can speak for us here at HURIPEC. And, on their end, we challenge them in terms of decolonial approaches because it is true that when you’ve grown up in Europe, you have a certain way that you see yourself in the world and a certain way that you’ve been given knowledge about the world. We can challenge that from a decolonial perspective.
Another strength of the collaborative research grants with Denmark is the PhDs. Africa suffers a very low PhD percentage rate per capita compared to global percentages. The charcoal project supports one PhD from Uganda and one from Tanzania. So the grants help build the much-needed expertise on the continent through scholarships for local PhDs.
Dr Mlangwa: I think Dr Sylvie did a good job exhausting it. I just want to continue emphasising that cross-pollination is really the greatest, and it’s not only for the South but everyone. Because I know this is very important in academic career advancement and professional development. So feeding into each other through such collaborative research is a win-win for both sides, as well as for our professional development.
Q: Do you have any ideas on how to improve research cooperation between Denmark and your respective countries?
Dr Mlangwa: l think there should be a player who coordinates the three countries. It would have been good if we could have an institution which is our monitor or a coordinator taking an audit of everything. It’s a lesson learned for everybody to do the audits themselves, but I’ve seen many collaborations where there is such [a coordinator]. They are more efficient and cost-effective.
Dr Namwase: I very much appreciate the opportunity to collaborate, and I’ve already given the reasons why I find it such a rare opportunity, at least from where I’m sitting. But with that said, I think one of the issues that could be looked into is the issue of overhead percentages that go to the Global South universities. It could be a problem that we have as Global South universities, but it is a thing that the universities also want to get their hands on the [international] funds that are coming to particular research centres. So perhaps there should be some specific percentage that is put aside for the central university and then a percentage for the department.
The second is the issue of travel visas. I can tell you the visa question is such a headache. It’s very disorienting and demoralising. I don’t know if it has changed, but it was quite notorious right after COVID. You could go three months without your passport because you’ve submitted it for a visa. On this project, we had a colleague who got his visa on the day and then had to travel [to Denmark] and return to Tanzania the same day.
Dr Mlangwa: Yes. That was painful.
Dr Namwase: It’s really not necessary because we sit back and feel like, “Okay, are we like some of the biggest criminals or what?”. And it can ruin it. You know that imbalance in the team? It’s a reminder that there is that hierarchy.
Adrian Ganic is M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONIMCS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN Correspondent
