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AI art is on the threshold of the “Controls Era” in 2025, says Adobe
Adobe introduces new generative AI features for its creative applications
Generate Background automatically replaces the background of images with AI content Photoshop 25.9 also adds a second new generative AI tool, Generate Background. It enables users to generate images – either photorealistic content, or more stylized images suitable for use as illustrations or concept art – by entering simple text descriptions. In addition, IBM’s Consulting solution will collaborate with clients to enhance their content supply chains using Adobe Workfront and Firefly, with an aim to enhance marketing, creative, and design processes.
Using the sidebar menu, users can tell the AI what camera angle and motion to use in the conversion. While Adobe Firefly now has the ability to generate both photos and videos from nothing but text, a majority of today’s announcements focus on using AI to edit something originally shot on camera. Adobe says there will be a fee to use these new tools based on “consumption” — which likely means users will need to pay for a premium Adobe Firefly plan that provides generative credits that can then be “spent” on the features.
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Since the launch of the first Firefly model in March 2023, Adobe has generated over 9 billion images with these tools, and that number is only expected to go up. Illustrator’s update includes a Dimension tool for automatic sizing information, a Mockup feature for 3D product previews, and Retype for converting static text in images into editable text. Photoshop enhancements feature the Generate Image tool, now generally available on desktop and web apps, and the Enhance Detail feature for sharper, more detailed large images. The Selection Brush tool is also now generally available, making object selection easier.
With Adobe is being massively careful in filtering certain words right now… I do hope in the future that users will be able to selectively choose exclusions in place of a general list of censored terms as exists now. While the prompt above is meant to be absurd – there are legitimate artistic reasons for many of the word categories which are currently banned. Once you provide a thumbs-up or thumbs-down… the overlay changes to request additional feedback. You don’t necessarily need to provide more feedback – but clicking on the Feedback button will allow you to go more in-depth in terms of why you provided the initial rating.
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To me, this just sounds like a fancy way of Adobe saying – Hey folks, we’ve gotten too deep into AI without realizing how expensive it would be. Since we have no way of slowing it down without burning up our cash reserves, we’ve decided to pass on those costs to you. We realize you’ve been long-time users of us now, so we know you don’t really have another alternative to start looking for at such short notice.
In that sense, as with any generative AI, photographers may have different views on its use, which is entirely reasonable. This differs from existing heal functions, which are best suited to small objects like dust spots or minor distractions. Generative Remove is designed to do much more, like removing an entire person from the background or making other complex removals. Adobe is attempting to thread a needle by creating AI-powered tools that help its customers without undercutting its larger service to creativity. At the Adobe MAX creativity conference this week, Adobe announced updates to its Adobe Creative Cloud products, including Premiere Pro and After Effects, as well as to Substance 3D products and the Adobe video ecosystem. Background audio can also be extended for up to 10 seconds, thanks to Adobe’s AI audio generation technology, though spoken dialogue can’t be generated.
We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space. Designers can also test product packaging with multiple patterns and design options, exploring ads with different seasonal variations and producing a range of designs across product mockups in endless combinations. If the admin stuff gets you down, outsource it to AI Assistant for Acrobat — a clever new feature that helps you generate summaries or get answers from your documents in one click. Say you have an otherwise perfect shot that’s ruined by one person in the group looking away or a photobombing animal.
Adobe’s Generative AI Jumps The Shark, Adds Bitcoin to Bird Photo – PetaPixel
Adobe’s Generative AI Jumps The Shark, Adds Bitcoin to Bird Photo.
Posted: Thu, 09 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The latest release of Photoshop also features new ways for creative professionals to more easily produce design concepts and asset creation for complex and custom outputs featuring different styles, colors and variants. When you need to move fast, the new Adobe Express app brings the best of these features together in an easy-to-use content creation tool. Final tweaks can be made using Generative Fill with the new Enhance Detail, a feature that allows you to modify images using text prompts. You can then improve the sharpness of the AI-generated variations to ensure they’re clear and blend with the original picture. When you need to create something from scratch, ask Text-to-Image to design it using text prompts and creative controls. If you have an idea or style that’s too hard to explain with text, upload an image for the AI to use as reference material.
It shares certain features with Photoshop but has a significantly narrower focus. Creative professionals use Illustrator to design visual assets such as logos and infographics. On the other hand, if it’s easy to create something from scratch that doesn’t rely on existing assets at all, AI will hurt stock and product photographers. Stock and product photographers are rightfully worried about how AI will impact their ability to earn a living. On the one hand, if customers can adjust content to fit their needs using AI within Adobe Stock, and the original creator of the content is compensated, they may feel less need to use generative AI to make something from scratch. The ability for a client to swiftly change things about a photo, for example, means they are more likely to license an image that otherwise would not have met their needs.
Photographers used to need to put their images in the cloud before they could edit them on Lightroom mobile. Like with Generative Remove, the Lens Blur is non-destructive, meaning users can tweak or disable it later in editing. Also, all-new presets allow photographers to quickly and easily achieve a specific look. Adobe is bringing even more Firefly-powered artificial intelligence (AI) tools to Adobe Lightroom, including Generative Remove and AI-powered Lens Blur. Not to be lost in the shuffle, the company is also expanding tethering support in Lightroom to Sony cameras. Although Adobe’s direction with Firefly has so far seemed focused on creating the best, most commercially safe generative AI tools, the company has changed its messaging slightly regarding generative video.
It’s joined by a similar capability, Image-to-Video, that allows users to describe the clip they wish to generate using not only a prompt but also a reference image. Adobe has announced new AI-powered tools being added to their software, aimed at enhancing creative workflows. The latest Firefly Vector AI model, available in public beta, introduces features like Generative Shape Fill, allowing users to add detailed vectors to shapes through text prompts. The Text to Pattern beta feature and Style Reference have also been improved, enabling scalable vector patterns and outputs that mirror existing styles. Creators also told me that they were pleased with the safeguards Adobe was trying to implement around AI.
Generative Remove and Fill can be valuable when they work well because they significantly reduce the time a photographer must spend on laborious tasks. Replacing pixels by hand is hard to get right, and even when it works well, it takes an eternity. The promise of a couple of clicks saving as much as an hour or two is appealing for obvious reasons. “Before the update, it was more like 90-95%.” Even when they add a prompt to improve the results, they say they get “absurd” results. As a futurist, he is dedicated to exploring how these innovations will shape our world.
Lightroom Mobile Has Quick Tools and Adaptive Presets
Adobe and IBM are also exploring the integration of watsonx.ai with Adobe Acrobat AI to assist enterprises using on-premises and private cloud environments. Adobe and IBM share a combined mission of digitizing the information supply chain within the enterprise, and generative AI plays an important role in helping to deliver this at scale. IBM and Adobe have announced a “unique alliance” of their tech solutions, as the two firms look to assist their clients with generative AI (GenAI) adoption.
- That removes the need for designers to manually draw a line around each item they wish to edit.
- The Firefly Video Model also incorporates the ability to eliminate unwanted elements from footage, akin to Photoshop’s content-aware fill.
- Our commitment to evolving our assessment approach as technology advances is what helps Adobe balance innovation with ethical responsibility.
- For example, you could clone and paint a woman’s shirt to appear longer if there is any stomach area showing.
It’s free for now, though Adobe said in a new release that it will reveal pricing information once the Firefly Video model gets a full launch. From Monday, there are two ways to access the Firefly Video model as part of the beta trial. The feature is also limited to a maximum resolution of 1080p for now, so it’s not exactly cinema quality. While Indian brands lead in adoption, consumers are pushing for faster, more ethical advancements,” said Anindita Veluri, Director of Marketing at Adobe India. Adobe has also shared that its AI features are developed in accordance with the company’s AI Ethics principles of accountability, responsibility, and transparency, and it makes use of the Content Authenticity Initiative that it is a part of.
If you’re looking for something in-between, we know some great alternatives, and they’re even free, so you can save on Adobe’s steep subscription prices. Guideline violations are still frequent when there is nothing in the image that seems to have the slightest possibility of being against the guidelines. Although I still don’t know how to prompt well in Photoshop, I have picked up a few things over the last year that could be helpful. You probably know that Adobe has virtually no documentation that is actually helpful if you’ve tried to look up how to prompt well in Photoshop. Much of the information on how to prompt for Adobe Firefly doesn’t apply to Photoshop.
APPLY NOW: A Call for Applications for PhD and Postdoc Grants from BSU
BSU seeks to strengthen graduate training at Gulu University by increasing the number of staff with PhD and Post Doc Degrees.
BSU is now offering eight fully financed gants – four for PhD and another four for posdoc – to suitabale individuals. For details on the PhD grants follow this link. For details on the postdoc grants follow this link.
Danish Foreign Affairs Ministry Team on Monitoring Mission at Gulu University
Gulu University will on December 6, 2023, host a team from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark as part of arrangements to monitor and ensure that Danish-funded programmes and projects at the university are well managed.
The team, which will be received through the Royal Danish Embassy (RDE) in Kampala, will particularly be interested in two projects at Gulu University: Building Stronger Universities (BSU) and Unlocking the Potential of Green Charcoal Innovations to Mitigate Climate Change in Northern Uganda (UPCHAIN).
The team includes Adam Sparre Spliid, the Deputy Head of Mission/Head of Cooperation at the Royal Danish Embassy in Kampala, Ole Dahl Rasmussen, Team Leader, Royal Danish Embassy, Andrew Thomas Bagoole, Senior Programme Advisor, Royal Danish Embassy, and Louise Møller Christensen who is on internship at the embassy.
“The overall objective of the on-site programmatic monitoring is to assess capacity and compliance, and to make recommendations on how we can do things better going forward,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark states in the team’s Terms of Reference.
The team will be received by Prof. Charles Nelson Okumu, the Chair of BSU and Secretary of the UPHAIN Advisory Board, Dr. Collins Okello, the Dean, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment and UPCHAIN Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI), and Dr. Agatha Alidri, the Coordinator of both BSU and UPCHAIN.
From Baseline to Design Interventions: UPCHAIN Enters Research Phase II
UPCHAIN has entered phase two. A workshop for transitioning from problem identification and baseline studies (phase 1) to experimentation and design intervention (phase 2) has ended today at Adjumani Multipurpose Training Centre in Adjumani town, West Nile, northern Uganda.
Participants pose for a group photo at Adjumani Multipurpose Training Centre (Photo by Oscar Ogwang)
Launched in May 2022 at Gulu University, the UPCHAIN project seeks to develop innovative ways to produce and use briquettes (green charcoal) from agricultural residues as a sustainable source of energy, in response to climate change through reduced reliance on wood fuel and black charcoal for cooking.
Although UPCHAIN is anchored on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, which is about Climate Action, its activities have a potentially big influence on the majority of the SDGs among the communities in northern Uganda where it is being implemented.
The Adjumani workshop, held from November 12 to 15, 2023, brought together all students supported by UPCHAIN (6 PhD and 10 MA), as well as the project implementers from Uganda and Denmark, to review the progress of the project in the first phase and strategise for the next phase.
Prof. Dirckinck-Holmfeld (l), the Principal Investigator (PI), and Dr. Geoffrey Tabo facilitate a session
The PhD and Masters students, together with their supervisors, are conducting research in different aspects of green charcoal, ranging from production (including making machines) to marketability and adoption in households.
An estimated 40 percent of black charcoal supplied in urban parts of Uganda is from northern Uganda. A recent presidential directive banned the production and sale of charcoal from the region in an effort to stop deforestation. While this is environmentally sound, it creates an energy deficit under the current circumstances in Uganda.
Green charcoal is seen as a sustainable alternative to black charcoal and firewood, with the potential to reduce deforestation and curb climate change.
“A very important finding across the project is that we should not talk about one innovation model for green charcoal but, instead, at least four models have been identified. This came out in the presentation of one of the PhD students, Judith Awacorach,” said Prof. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld (Aalborg University), the UPCHAIN Principal Investigator (PI).
L-R: Assoc. Prof. Quentin Gausset, Dr. Nicholas Okello, and Judith Awacorach working on a model
The models are Individual Production (characterized by hands and simple tools and targeting small or informal markets), Self Help Groups (using manual machines for production and targeting the informal market), Small Enterprises (using small motorized machines and producing for informal and formal economy), and Medium Enterprises (big motorised machines targeting the formal economy).
“I really want to congratulate the participants for their hard and detailed work. It provides insights into the complexity of changing practices of something so essential as cooking and innovating for green charcoal. The perspective of UPCHAIN is both to create awareness of climate change mitigation and to come up with inclusive and sustainable solutions to the production, the marketing and the adoption of green charcoal among households, schools as well as governmental and international agencies,” added Prof. Dirckinck-Holmfeld.
Dr. Collins Okello, the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, and also the UPCHAIN Co-PI, said the project had taken off “very well”.
“The teams are working together. The students we recruited are already doing their research – some have already reached the level of examination of the dissertation. The production unit has already been fabricated – green charcoal [briquettes] machines for Pabbo [in Amuru Distirct] and Gulu City. An MOU has already been signed with the district of Amuru and land has been secured. We are now engaging the youth who will run the project. We have done capacity development with a number of trainings for the students in data collection, proposal writing, and reporting. Ethical clearance has been done. Our partnership with Denmark is very good and we are doing joint supervision of the students. So, we are doing well,” said Dr. Okello.
L-R: Prof. Charles Okumu, Dr. Collins Okello and Dr. Agatha Alidri having a conversation
While opening the workshop, Ben Anyama, the LCV Chairman for Adjumani District, said it was necessary to mobilise communities to adopt green charcoal use especially to curtail deforestation.
“If we could mobilise and sensitise them I think the issue of charcoal burning in the future will not be there. It will be addressed by UPCHAIN. Beginning something is not easy. I am very sure UPCHAIN is going to succeed – actually, it has succeeded already,” said Anyama.
He pledged his continued support for the project not only in Adjumani District but in northern Uganda in general.
Anyama addresses workshop participants
“I want to assure you that as the district Chair, I am going to make sure we continue supporting this programme in the whole region. I am going to bring in our colleagues; the RDCs [Resident District Commissioners, CAOs [Chief Administrative Officers [CAOs] and District Environmental Officers,” he said.
Dr. Agatha Alidri, the UPCHAIN Coordinator said that the multidisciplinary nature of the project makes it complex, but the longer they are taking on the research, the more they are understanding the project.
“This is the first multidisciplinary project at Gulu University – from sciences to arts – everyone is here. In the beginning, it was difficult to know how we would work together. But we have made good strides. We are now scaling up. The machines are ready. Pabbo [Amuru District] gave us land] and that shows the zeal of the community in this project. This is also a sign that their confidence in Gulu University has grown,” said Dr. Alidri.
Groups comprised participants from different disciplines
Assoc. Prof. Quentin Gausset from the University of Copenhagen, a member of the UPCHAIN Executive Committee, urged his fellow researchers to embrace action research by its standards.
“We are not just studying people. We are studying with the people. How many of you are using green charcoal in your homes? If we are not using it then how do we expect others to use it?” He challenged them.
Report and Photos by William Odinga
Amuru District Gives Land to Gulu University for UPCHAIN Research Project
Gulu University (GU) has received land from the Amuru District Local Government to boost its efforts in the research, production, and promotion of charcoal from agricultural waste, also known as green charcoal.
On October 13, 2023, the LCV Chairman, Michael Lakony, handed to the university close to an acre of land in Pabbo Town, with the promise to donate more land if required for the same purpose.
Gulu University’s Dr. Collins Okello (l), shares a copy of the MoU with Mr. Lakony
The land will be used to set up a facility where members of the community can learn about green charcoal and how to produce and use it.
Through the UPCHAIN project, GU is researching and promoting the adoption of briquettes produced from agricultural waste as an alternative to black charcoal and firewood.
This research is expected to contribute to stopping deforestation (in response to environmental degradation and Climate Change), reducing smoke-induced health issues as well as creating local employment.
Amuru CAO Mr. Otai (l), Pabbo Mayor Mr. Camhara (m), and Town Clerk Ms. Adum display a copy of the MoU
Pabbo is among the potential commercial-scale production centres of briquettes identified by the team managing UPCHAIN, especially because it generates a lot of waste from rice, in the form of rice husks.
“We have not seen research that gives tangible outcomes as this project. Most research projects are merely scholarly, but in this one, you are even producing machines, and you will keep modifying them for the betterment of the environment,” said Lakony during the handover ceremony held in the meeting hall of Pabbo Town Council.
Dr. Collins Okello, the UPCHAIN Co-Principal Investigator (PI), who represented the Vice Chancellor, Prof. George Openjuru Ladaah, said environmental degradation had become a major concern for the university especially when northern Uganda became the main producer of charcoal for Uganda’s urban markets. Dr. Okello is also the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment.
L-R: Mr. Otai, Mr. Lakony, Dr. Agatha Alidri, Dr. Okello and Prof. Charles Okumu holding a conversation beside the land
Stressing the importance of the UPCHAIN initiative to the Amuru community, the Amuru District Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Charles Otai, said: “We are responsible for our destiny. The district will play its part, and the town council (of Pabbo) will play its part, but we expect you [GU] to take the lead. And where you need any support from us we are more than willing to work with you. The district council, as a planning authority, when it takes a decision, it is in the interest of the community, and the decision we are making now is to solve the issue of environmental degradation.”
Amuru District leaders and leaders of UPCHAIN pose for a photo after inspecting the land
The function was attended by several local government leaders, including the Mayor of Pabbo Town, Richard Camhara, and several leaders of the UPCHAIN project, including the Project Coordinator, Dr. Agatha Alidri, and the Secretary of the UPCHAIN Advisory Board, Prof. Charles Nelson Okumu. Both Camhara and Lakony are members of the advisory board.
UPCHAIN Marks One Year with First Annual Seminar
UPCHAIN is marking one year today.
Prof. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld, the project PI, has challenged PHD and MA students supported by the project, as well as the project implementers, to develop “different, inclusive green charcoal innovations” in response to environmental and energy demands, especially in northern Uganda.
“We see that green charcoal can make a contribution to the fight against climate change, how we can reduce carbon dioxide, and how we can achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. What we have learned in the first year is that there is a variety of green charcoal, there is a variety of production systems, and there is a variety of cook stoves,” said Dirckinck-Holmfeld.
Prof. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld
She was speaking during the first UPCHAIN annual seminar held May 10, 2023, at Gulu University’s new library, exactly one year since the project was launched.
Among UPCHAIN successes so far, she said, was the enrolment and commencement of studies for six PHDs, 10 MAs, and a postdoc. Other achievements include building collaboration with different partners, media coverage, conducting fieldwork, and starting a community of practice on green charcoal for Gulu City.
Prof. David Okello Owiny, the Gulu University Deputy Vice Chancellor in Charge of Academics, who officially opened the seminar, called for mindset change, even among the researchers, away from using black charcoal to using green charcoal.
Prof. David Okello Owiny
“The villages are very good at producing but they don’t use the [black] charcoal. It goes to cities that even have alternative sources of energy. There is a need for mindset change,” he said.
“Let’s do research with the community which we want to benefit from this research. We cannot keep cutting trees. Let the research we are doing transform the community,” he added.
The seminar was attended by the UPCHAIN sponsored PHD, MA students and a postdoc fellow, student supervisors, local government representatives, a representative from the Office of the Prime Minister, NGO representatives, as well as the managers and the Executive Board of UPHCHAIN.
Gulu Residents Form a Community of Practice to Promote Green Charcoal in Northern Uganda
Northern Uganda has recently turned its attention to environmental degradation, especially as a result of the widespread cutting of trees to produce charcoal. It is estimated that 40 percent of the charcoal supplied in urban Uganda is from the region. Central and local government authorities have tried bans in an attempt to reverse the trend but the demand for charcoal, as a source of energy for cooking, especially in urban areas, and a quest for income for local people, continues to drive the felling of trees.
Researchers at Gulu University, with their colleagues at Aalborg University and the University Copenhagen in Denmark, are working with local communities in northern Uganda to turn agricultural residues into charcoal which the local people can use at home and also sell. It comes in the form of briquettes. It is called green charcoal.
The researchers say that green charcoal is cleaner. It poses fewer health risks than black charcoal. They add that it can help with climate change mitigation by acting as an alternative to black charcoal (charcoal from trees). The more agricultural residues are used to produce green charcoal for energy, the more trees are spared.
Through the Unlocking the Potential of Green Charcoal Innovations to Mitigate Climate Change in Northern Uganda (UPCHAIN) project, the researchers on May 8, 2023, held a workshop with a select people mainly from Gulu City, at Takataka Plastic-Zodongo, in Gulu, to discuss the different issues surrounding black and green charcoal. The theme of the workshop was: How can citizens in Gulu City and northern Uganda be the first movers on the use and production of green charcoal? The participants included producers of agricultural residues (including millers), users of charcoal (including restaurant owners), producers of briquettes, as well as NGOs involved in the promotion of energy-saving techniques and technologies.
Participants generate ideas for promoting green charcoal during group discussions
Conducted mostly in the local language, Luo, the workshop discussed environmental degradation, laws, rules, regulations and their implementation, the quality and cost of briquettes as compared to black charcoal, as well as cultural perceptions when it comes to cooking.
Dr. Geoffrey Tabo, one of the organisers of the workshop, said the objective of the workshop was to champion the use of green charcoal in Gulu City.
“We are setting the base in changing practices from using black charcoal to using green charcoal,” Dr. Tabo said.
“We are experiencing extreme weather events – floods, landslides, fires. This project [UPCHAIN] comes at a time when the whole world is saying we have to do something – calling for climate action. We come together and discuss experiences, and then we try to find different ways by asking questions. For example, green charcoal has been with us. Why have we not been using it,” added Prof. Elizabeth Opiyo, the head of the Research Capacity Building and Organization component of UPCHAIN.
At the end of the workshop, the participants formed a group, or a community of practice, through which they will work together to promote green charcoal production and use. The group will work in collaboration with Gulu University.
“We have started this journey to save the environment. And we want to move together on this journey. The community of practice we have formed will advance charcoal innovations in Uganda,” said Dr. Collins Okello, the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment (FAE), Gulu University, and Co-Principal Investigator of UPCHAIN.
We Need to Carefully Consider Gender Roles as UPCHAIN Promotes Green Charcoal Access and Adoption in Northern Uganda
I am one of the beneficiaries of the UPCHAIN project at Gulu University, having mid-2022 won a grant for my Master of Arts (MA) in History. As part of this MA, I am researching gender relations in cooking, with a focus on strategies to advance green charcoal acceptance in Northern Ugandan households through learning from people’s experiences with previous and existing cooking fuels.
UPCHAIN – Unlocking the Potential of Green Charcoal Innovations to Mitigate Climate Change in Northern Uganda – is primarily looking at the production and use of briquettes (also known as green charcoal) from agricultural waste as a cleaner and more environmentally friendly alternative to black charcoal and firewood.
In September 2022 UPCHAIN organized a field trip to Amuru District for all the grant beneficiaries and project implementers first of all for the group to meet with the different stakeholders of the project, but also for it to get a feel of the impact of the demand for cooking energy on livelihoods and the environment.
A closer look at Amuru from the onset of the trip seemed to indicate why it is a crucial area identified for the implementation of the UPCHAIN project: Heavily loaded charcoal trucks, some of them disguised as cargo vehicles, and businesses operating along the roadside, gave a clear indication of the whole charcoal business chain in the area.
A truck loaded with charcoal along the road from Amuru to Gulu. Photo: Simon Okello What is surprising, however, is that the main sellers are women. They sell charcoal either in small quantities (basins, polythene bags) or sacks. Most of them spend the entire day there, under the unpredictable weather, with their infants. This makes one wonder what role gender plays in the entire process: Are men involved only in the production process and women are left to do the selling; and who controls the proceeds from the sale of charcoal? These are some of the questions my research will have to find answers to.
Also, where the charcoal is taken, in urban and peri-urban areas, the focus on gender roles in cooking seems to be mainly on women when it comes to procurement and use of solid cooking fuels – because, typically, they are the ones who go to the market for the fuels and also do the cooking. There is, definitely, no doubt that in many households, men determine the amount of money spent on purchasing charcoal for example, but we also need to understand clearly how they influence the choice of fuel to be used for cooking and what the factors behind that are.
There are already clear observations of traditional or cultural gender roles in rural areas like Amuru when it comes to cooking and access to energy for cooking. Women and girls fetch the firewood and do the cooking. What role do men and boys play in the household when it comes to cooking, and access to energy for cooking? What about in urban areas? What do the females do and what do the males do when it comes to the kitchen? How are the different sexes affected by their gender roles in cooking and access to energy for cooking? These are questions we need to answer.
In rural areas, it is clear that most girls and women spend a lot of time looking for firewood. The setting (urban or rural) may differ but definitely, the girls on the rural side are more disadvantaged, since their households heavily rely on firewood for cooking. Besides the environmental risks that the continued use of these solid fuels poses, health risks, mainly to the users, are alarming. Similarly, the long hours spent on collecting such fuels and the encroachment on school time for the children (girls) should be of public concern.
Another debatable issue is whether men or women should be considered more when introducing and advancing the use of a new or more advanced form of cooking fuel, in this particular case green charcoal, in order for it to be adopted quickly. Green charcoal is made from available local resources such as maize cobs, coffee husks, groundnut shells, and wood residues among others. A visit to Aywek ki Mone Aoyo & Sons Millersin Pabbo Sub-County showed how these so-called ‘wastes’ are readily available.
With the establishment of one of the green charcoal production sites at Bungatira, the surrounding households seem to be embracing innovation. This is more so because, in comparison to black charcoal, green charcoal (of good quality) burns for a longer period, produces less ash, and almost no smoke while cooking.
It is inevitable to consider both men and women as the household heads who make choices for the type of energy to be used. But which of these two categories is more likely to openly and fully embrace the actual production and use of briquettes?
It is against this background that I propose a critical consideration of gender relations in cooking, and in particular, the gender roles in relation to access and choice of cooking fuel, to advance green charcoal acceptance and use in both urban and rural households in Northern Uganda.
The writer, Simon Okello, is pursuing his MA in History at Gulu University with support from UPCHAIN.
Learners, Refugees Are Key Target Groups for Green Charcoal Adoption, Say UPCHAIN Leaders
Learners in primary and secondary schools, and refugees, are key groups the UPCHAIN project targets to influence as it promotes the use of briquettes in cooking as a cleaner and more environmentally friendly alternative to black charcoal and firewood.
This was emphasized by the leaders of the project during a series of meetings they held recently with local government leaders of Adjumani and Amuru districts, and with government and NGO representatives managing refugee affairs in northern Uganda.
The UPCHAIN team included Prof. Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld who is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project, Dr. Agatha Alidri, the Project Coordinator, and Prof. Charles Nelson Okumu, the UPCHAIN Interim Executive Committee Chairperson.
Others on the team were Prof. Arne Remmen, Dr. Geoffrey Tabo Olok, Dr. Geoffrey Openy, Francis Atube, Robert Ringtho, Judith Awacorach and Dr. John Bismarck Okumu.
“We want to introduce green charcoal into the curriculum so that kids can be aware of how to make it and use it, but also about Climate Change and the broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” said Prof. Dirckinck-Holmfeld during a meeting with the Adjumani District LCV Chairman, Ben Anyama, on November 30, 2022.
Dr. John Bismark Okumu, the leader of the curriculum component of the project, said a school is a unit which can easily spread information and knowledge through learners.
“Even the small ones can change the mindset of their parents when they see something new, for example, someone cooking using something different, Okumu said. “We shall be targeting all learners, including those in refugee settlements.”
Adjumani was particularly selected for the project because of the big number of refugees the district hosts, mostly from South Sudan. Number of refugees in Adjumani
“This is a peaceful district, and also unique, unique in a way that the number of refugees is more than that of the hosts,” said Anyama, the district Chairperson. “UPCHAIN will help us to address the issue of conflicting areas, for example the burning of charcoal by refugees. They have no land. This project will help reduce conflicts with the host communities over the cutting of trees.”
Anyama said the district will focus on two areas – mindset change, so that people can adopt green charcoal, and the marketing of green charcoal among potential users.
The following day the team visited the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) in Adjumani and held discussions with OPM officials and representatives of the international NGO Lutheran World Federation (LWF).
UPCHAIN team meets representatives of organisations handling refugees at the OPM offices in Adjumani The OPM and LWF team, led by Titus Joogo, the Adjumani refugee desk officer, reaffirmed its commitment to the UPCHAI project and applauded Gulu University for taking research and knowledge sharing to the grassroots.
“We have never invested enough as stakeholders to learn through research. However, there is a lot of knowledge which, when shared, can be of much benefit to people. The academia is critical in generating knowledge and disseminating it,” said Swalleh Lule, an environment officer in the OPM.
“We look at energy at the basic level – for cooking, lighting. Unfortunately we are trapped in the use of biomass which, by all standards, is dirty. Somehow there has been very little interest from stakeholders to contribute to the energy sector in terms of research, in terms of funding. Meagre resources have been invested in energy. Your [UPCHAIN’s] coming is timely. It adds to the efforts that we have initiated,” added Lule.
Apollo Nagumya, the LWF team leader said they had tried many alternative energy projects in refugee settlements. Some had succeeded, others had failed.
“We have to bring solutions to refugee settlements, especially for cooking. Some gender based violence at home comes from women having to search for energy for cooking,” Nagumya said.
“We bring solutions [for example energy saving cook stoves] but we don’t know their efficiency levels. The academia is very important in all this. We will support you up to the end. We need your information to help us in our programming. Your solutions should add value,” Nagumya added.
UPCHAIN Will Help Us to Address Community Sustainable Energy Needs and Provide a Safer Environment for Women and Children
May 10, 2022, was a very special day for me–firstly as an administrator, secondly as a teacher, and thirdly, as a woman in the African setting.
As more than 120 people gathered at Gulu University’s new library to witness the launch of our green charcoal (briquettes) research project, which we technically refer to as Unlocking the potential of Green Charcoal Innovations to Mitigate Climate Change in Northern Uganda (UPCHAIN), I was not only excited about us starting to implement this project, but also about the potential impact of the green charcoal concept in transforming livelihoods, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where most of the population relies on biomass energy for cooking.
That morning, I sat quietly and thoughtfully in my chair as I waited for the opening session to begin. It was during that time that I recalled a headline on the website of the Danish Development Research Network (DDRN) about our initial steps toward research in green charcoal development. The headline read thus: Green Charcoal: Could Research at Gulu University Ignite a Biomass Energy Revolution in Uganda? That story was published in May 2021 at the time when we applied for a grant to take this research to another level. That article clearly brought out the issues behind our research: the need for energy, the need for cleaner energy, the need to address Climate Change, the need to create jobs, and the gender aspects of energy.
As an administrator, I was really happy that BSU had birthed this grand, interdisciplinary research project at Gulu University. To look around the room and see all these researchers from the Faculty of Education and Humanities, Faculty of Business and Development Studies, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Science, Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, Institute of Research and Graduate Studies, as well as researchers from Aalborg University in Denmark, who had participated in developing the project proposal, was really fascinating.
I recalled the very early days when we were starting to conceptualize the green charcoal research idea. Professor Michael Whyte of the University of Copenhagen (who did not attend the launch ceremony) was so passionate about what green charcoal could offer.
When he and others returned to Gulu from a study tour in Soroti in November 2019, where they had seen the good work of the Teso Women Development Initiative with their briquettes project, Whyte was so swift in proposing further research to be undertaken on how green charcoal briquettes could be made to mitigate charcoal burning in northern Uganda. This was at the time when the then Chairman of Gulu District Local Government, Ojara Mapenduzi, had staged a spirited fight against tree cutting and charcoal burning in Gulu District.
I have been coordinating at BSU for the last six years and I am proud to say that at UGX6bn, this is the largest research project directly coming out of our work here at BSU. Of course, I don’t underestimate the enormous contribution of BSU since 2011 in building the capacity of Gulu University both in terms of human resource development and infrastructure development, especially for research. BSU has among other achievements built Gulu University’s capacity to apply for highly competitive external grants such as UPCHAIN.
As a teacher and a researcher, I see a lot of potential in both the sciences and humanities disciplines for research, teaching, and learning, directly and indirectly, coming out of the UPCHAIN project.
To start with, the six PhDs, 12 MAs and one postdoc which are funded by the project will enable us to understand different aspects of green charcoal. Climate Change and Green charcoal are both social and environmental issues and need a new approach to understanding them.
The multi-disciplinary approach in the project, for example, creates the puzzle of how History can be used to address Climate Change. This project demystifies the fallacy of the irrelevance of history as a discipline in transforming lives. The different researches will bring out unique ideas around green charcoal and each of those ideas will certainly raise other areas for research, teaching, and learning. As another major important benefit, the PhDs and Masters provide the lecturers an opportunity for graduate supervision capacity building.
Secondly, because energy and climate changes are key social issues, which are well articulated in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Seven and 13 respectively – although this project directly addresses most of the 17 goals – the active participation of the communities in the green charcoal research project offers a good opportunity for knowledge to be turned into practice almost immediately.
This learning by doing should make it easier for the communities to adopt green charcoal as they will have seen its benefits in comparison to other crude energy sources such as firewood and black charcoal. The UPCHAIN project provides a new strategy in the use of a bottom-up approach in mitigating climate change from the household level where wood fuel is commonly used as cooking fuel. Providing alternative cooking fuel would help mitigate the destruction of trees and climate change.
And finally, as a woman in the African setting, I recognize the fact that gender imbalance is still strong here. In most African societies the kitchen is a woman’s area and while there, her young children are her regular companions. When it comes to health issues, women and children are the main victims of using unclean fuels such as firewood and black charcoal.
They take the biggest chunk of the nearly four million people worldwide who die each year because of using unclean fuels. Besides that, the responsibility of finding energy for cooking, in most cases firewood, falls squarely on women and girls. They sometimes have to walk very long distances to find it and along the way they are exposed to other risks such as sexual violence.
The difficulty of accessing wood fuel has often resulted in domestic violence as the woman is unable to prepare food on time. A woman with a disability is more affected by the use of wood cooking fuel. Green charcoal would be the solution for women with disabilities. It will improve the quality of life in the kitchen and cooking and the household.
Once we are able to deliver green charcoal to the kitchen, we are solving the problem of the woman and the child having to walk long distances in search of energy for cooking, we are preventing health and safety issues that come with searching for and using dirty fuels for cooking, and we are ensuring that girls are staying in schools and women can use their time more efficiently such as increasing their time participation in income generating activities.
We are grateful to DANIDA for again coming in to support our research activities by generously funding the UPCHAIN project.
This story was first published on June 30, 2022, on the BSU website. It was republished by The Sunrise and DFC under different headlines