Across the provinces of Équateur, Mongala and Kasaï Oriental, CEPEF works in landscapes that are among the Congo Basin’s greatest ecological treasures. Around Mbandaka and Basankusu lies the world’s largest complex of tropical peatlands—a globally important carbon sink that has accumulated over millennia. These landscapes also encompass vast community forests, where local communities hold legally recognized rights over their lands.
Yet this extraordinary natural heritage is increasingly threatened by structural economic realities. Firewood and charcoal remain the primary source of household energy for almost every family in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where only 1% of households have access to hydropower. This dependence places constant pressure on forests and, increasingly, drives the conversion of peatlands into subsistence farmland. Today, more than 90% of the country’s forest loss is linked to subsistence agriculture—a survival strategy in a country where nearly three-quarters of the population live on less than US$2.15 a day. Meanwhile, biodegradable agricultural and household waste remains largely overlooked, despite its potential to provide an affordable, locally available source of clean energy.
Women and girls carry the heaviest burden of this crisis. Every day, they walk long distances to collect firewood, performing physically demanding work while facing prolonged exposure to household smoke and its harmful health impacts. This unpaid and largely invisible labour shapes the daily lives of millions of Congolese women, limiting the time they can devote to education, income-generating activities or community leadership.
Reducing pressure on the Congo Basin’s forests and peatlands therefore requires more than protecting ecosystems. It means creating locally rooted energy alternatives that meet everyday household needs while easing the disproportionate burden placed on women and girls—making environmental protection and social justice advance together.
CEPEF transforms biodegradable waste into ecological charcoal briquettes, creating an affordable alternative to firewood and traditional charcoal. By training young women to produce and distribute these briquettes, the organisation addresses multiple challenges at once: reducing pressure on the Congo Basin’s forests and peatlands, creating local economic opportunities, and easing the daily burden of firewood collection carried by women and girls.
Rather than relying on one-off trainings, CEPEF has developed a training-of-trainers model that enables knowledge to spread organically through communities. Operating across six provinces of the DRC, the programme equips around twenty women per province with the technical skills to become trainers themselves, allowing practical solutions to be replicated well beyond the initial participants while strengthening women’s leadership at the local level.
Alongside technical training, CEPEF works with communities to build awareness of the connections between household energy use, deforestation and the protection of the Congo Basin’s forests and peatlands. By making these links visible, the organisation supports lasting changes in everyday practices and encourages locally owned solutions to environmental challenges.
Building on its experience in converting biodegradable waste into valuable resources, CEPEF is preparing the next stage of its work: developing sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic packaging. This initiative would extend the organisation’s circular economy model beyond household energy, demonstrating how locally available waste can become a resource that supports both environmental protection and community livelihoods.
Chouchou Mpungu Losale believes that protecting the Congo Basin begins with empowering the communities who depend on it every day. Her work focuses on turning local challenges into practical solutions—transforming biodegradable waste into clean energy alternatives that reduce pressure on forests while creating new opportunities for women.
Through CEPEF, she equips young women with the skills to produce ecological charcoal briquettes and has built a women-led training network that enables knowledge to spread from one community to another across multiple provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. By combining environmental protection, circular economy principles and women’s leadership, she is helping communities reduce their dependence on forest resources while advancing a locally rooted and socially just energy transition.
