D-Olivette: Clean Tech Entrepreneur Returns to Farming Roots to Create Waste Transformer
It took the passing of his mother in Southern Nigeria’s rural farming community for award-winning environmentalist Tunde Adeyemi to create a social enterprise, D-Olivette, dedicated to tackling energy-poverty, agricultural, and climate challenges.
At D-Olivette’s core lies the 1,000,000 Closed-Loop Farms Project, an initiative that transforms over 100 types of organic waste into livestock feed, fertilizer and clean energy, and was inspired by what Adeyemi discovered in the farming community where he grew up.
Adeyemi had turned his back on the gritty reality of farming life in Nigeria for Lagos University and better prospects. But it was when he returned home for his mother’s funeral that his research into her premature death unearthed some startling revelations.
As he visited her farm, he realized that her issues reflected the daily experience of farming life in Southern Nigeria: the significant postharvest losses, piled high and polluting the farmland, the filth of the cassava processing area, and the use of firewood for processing were causing harmful emissions. He saw that this toxic cocktail of waste, firewood smoke, and even counterfeit fertilizer probably contributed to his mother’s premature death from respiratory failure.
He visited thousands more farms in the area as part of his quest to understand the circumstances around her death, and found similar hotspots for greenhouse gas emissions. Methane-producing livestock were farmed with no sign of effective waste systems, and without access to clean energy or electricity, he found many communities trapped in a cycle of pollution, poverty and disease. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), African farms produce over 1 billion tons of agricultural waste of which less than 5% is utilized. Nigeria generates about 25% of this waste. Moreover, energy poverty affects over half of Africa’s population, with nearly 700 million relying on traditional fuels—causing over 500,000 deaths annually, primarily among women and children.
These conditions are prevalent not only in Africa but in similar farming communities globally. Determined to use his professional experience to make real change in his own farming community, Adeyemi established D-Olivette, a clean-tech social enterprise that has the potential to empower millions of farming communities worldwide.
D-Olivette states its innovative AI-powered biodigesters use cutting-edge, 100% natural enzymes to accelerate and enhance the digestion process, producing biogas from farm waste to serve as clean energy for farming communities, as well as organic livestock feed and fertilizer as byproducts. The initiative’s Kitchen Box transforms organic waste into clean cooking fuel and bio-fertilizer, while The Bio-Tank provides clean energy, livestock feed, and bio-fertilizer. Tackling the waste issues that Adeyemi’s mother would have faced, D-Olivette’s Bio-360 AI Chatbot now helps farmers across diverse linguistic and cultural landscapes optimize waste into clean energy and food.
Each year, D-Olivette reports they provide clean energy and sustainable agricultural inputs to over 80,000 farms and homes and mitigate over 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The initiative believes they are on track to impact 1,000,000 beneficiaries by 2030, fostering resilience and sustainability in underserved regions.
Learn more about D-Olivette.
Written by Gilly Smith
Photos provided by D-Olivette
