Biochar Industrial Group (BIG) has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to expand its innovative carbon-removal operations across the continent. This funding round, announced on September 17, 2026, signals strong confidence in Africa’s ability to lead the world in sustainable carbon removal solutions.
The investment was led by BREEGA, a venture capital firm known for backing ambitious founders, with participation from The Catalyst Fund, while the Mulago Foundation provided additional non-dilutive funding. This diverse group of investors recognises something important: Africa’s agricultural waste problem can be transformed into a global climate solution.
Biochar Industrial Group is not just another startup. The company was founded by Ikenna Nzewi, Uzoma Ayogu, and Isaiah Udotong, three entrepreneurs who previously spent nearly a decade building agricultural processing infrastructure at Releaf Earth, a Y Combinator-backed company. Their experience operating factories, developing industrial machinery, and connecting thousands of smallholder farmers to processing facilities has given them a rare understanding of both the challenges and opportunities in African agriculture.
Understanding the Problem: Waste, Emissions, and Degraded Soil
To appreciate why this funding matters, we must first understand the scale of the challenge that BIG is tackling. Africa currently produces approximately one billion tonnes of non-edible agricultural biomass every year. This includes nut shells, corn cobs, husks, and stalks—materials that most food processing factories simply discard.
When this waste is left to decompose in the open air, it releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing directly to global warming. In many cases, factories burn this waste openly, creating additional air pollution and health hazards for surrounding communities.
At the same time, Africa’s farmland is under severe pressure. Decades of intensive cultivation and heavy reliance on synthetic fertilisers have stripped the soil of essential nutrients. According to estimates, every hectare of African farmland loses between 30 and 60 kilograms of nutrients each year. This nutrient depletion makes it increasingly difficult for farmers to grow healthy crops, threatening food security across the continent.
The situation is dire. By 2050, experts predict that half of Africa’s arable land could become unusable if current trends continue. This would have a devastating impact on over 485 million people who depend on farming for their livelihoods and food supply. Africa needs solutions that address these interconnected problems—waste management, carbon emissions, and soil degradation—and it needs them urgently.
The Biochar Solution: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Technology
Biochar is not a new invention. In fact, it is a technique that has been used for thousands of years, most famously by indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin. However, modern science and industrial engineering have transformed this ancient practice into a powerful tool for climate action and agricultural renewal.
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance produced by heating organic material—such as agricultural waste—in an environment with very little oxygen. This process, called pyrolysis, prevents the material from burning completely. Instead, it transforms the carbon contained in the plant matter into a stable, solid form that can remain in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years.
The benefits of biochar are remarkable. When applied to soil, it acts like a sponge, holding onto water and nutrients that would otherwise wash away. It improves soil structure, increases its ability to retain moisture, and provides a habitat for beneficial microorganisms. For Africa’s acidic and often degraded tropical soils, biochar can be truly transformative.
Research from across the continent has demonstrated biochar’s potential. Trials in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, showed that applying biochar could increase bean yields by 40 per cent, chilli peppers by 55 per cent, and okra by 10 per cent. In Ghana, studies found that biochar application led to a 32.9 per cent increase in maize grain yields and a 58 per cent increase in cob yields. And in Tanzania, farmers trained to produce biochar from maize cobs reduced their fertiliser costs by 30 per cent while boosting cocoa yields.
But perhaps the most exciting aspect of biochar is its climate benefit. A single tonne of biochar can sequester between 0.5 and 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This means that every tonne of agricultural waste that BIG converts into biochar represents a permanent removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere—carbon that would otherwise have contributed to global warming.
How Biochar Industrial Group Operates
What sets Biochar Industrial Group apart is its business model. Rather than building large, centralised processing plants that require farmers and factories to transport their waste over long distances, BIG brings the technology directly to where the waste is produced. The company partners with food processing facilities—places that already generate large quantities of agricultural waste—and installs pyrolysis equipment on-site.
This approach, which BIG calls “Biochar-as-a-Service,” is elegant in its simplicity. The food processors provide the waste; BIG finances, installs, and operates the equipment. The company handles all the technical aspects, including carbon measurement and verification, and sells the resulting carbon removal credits to international buyers. The biochar itself is then returned to agricultural supply chains, where it can be used as a soil amendment to help farmers restore their depleted land.
This model creates value for everyone involved. For food processors, agricultural waste that was once a costly liability—something they had to pay to dispose of—becomes a new source of revenue. For farmers, biochar provides an affordable way to improve soil health and increase yields. For the climate, every tonne of waste processed represents carbon permanently removed from the atmosphere. And for BIG, the sale of carbon removal credits and biochar creates a sustainable business model that can be replicated across the continent.
The company is targeting food processors that generate at least 2,500 tonnes of suitable waste per year. These are businesses with enough waste to justify the installation of on-site pyrolysis equipment, but not so large that they would require massive industrial facilities. By focusing on this segment, BIG can deploy its technology quickly and efficiently, creating a network of carbon removal sites close to where agricultural waste is produced.
The Investors Behind the Vision
The $1.5 million pre-seed round was led by BREEGA, a venture capital firm with a track record of supporting ambitious founders across Africa and Europe. Tosin Faniro-Dada, a partner at BREEGA, explained the firm’s decision to invest: “BIG is turning a real industrial waste problem into repeatable, audit-grade carbon credits, and doing it with a level of operational discipline that’s rare this early”.
The Catalyst Fund, which participated in the round, is a pre-seed venture fund that backs mission-driven entrepreneurs in Africa and other emerging markets. Oluwatoyin Emmanuel-Olubake, the fund’s Chief Investment Officer, said: “We invested in BIG because it developed an innovative approach to solve multiple problems for agribusinesses critical to African and global economic growth with a single, self-reinforcing model”.
The Mulago Foundation, which provided non-dilutive funding, is a philanthropic organisation that supports scalable solutions to poverty. Its backing of BIG reflects the recognition that biochar technology can deliver both environmental and social benefits, creating livelihoods and improving food security while addressing climate change.
This mix of venture capital and philanthropic funding is important. It shows that BIG’s model is attractive not only for its potential financial returns but also for its measurable social and environmental impact. As the company scales, this combination of commercial and mission-driven support will be crucial for navigating the challenges of building industrial infrastructure in Africa.
Read Also: How the Catalyst Fund is Powering Africa’s Climate Tech Revolution
What the Funding Will Enable
The $1.5 million in new funding will be used to deploy pyrolysis equipment at more food processing facilities across Sub-Saharan Africa. The company plans to hire staff in engineering, operations, logistics, and carbon verification—creating technical jobs in rural communities where employment opportunities are often limited.
BIG also plans to build digital monitoring systems that track how much biomass is processed and how much carbon is stored. This kind of transparency and accountability is essential for the carbon credit market, where buyers demand rigorous proof that their investments are delivering real climate benefits.
The company has already visited sites across West Africa and received interest from other parts of the continent. Rather than focusing on specific countries, BIG selects locations based on the availability of suitable biomass and the presence of food processing facilities that can partner with the company. This pragmatic approach allows BIG to scale rapidly without being constrained by national borders.
Ikenna Nzewi, BIG’s Chief Executive Officer, articulated the company’s ambitious vision: “Africa has natural advantages to lead the most scalable and cost-effective biomass-based carbon removal globally. By forming true win-win partnerships with agricultural processors to produce biochar, we have the opportunity to turn localised waste liabilities into a transformative global solution”.
Africa’s Growing Role in Carbon Removal
Biochar Industrial Group’s success is part of a larger trend of African climate technology companies attracting international investment. In 2025, BIOSORRA, a women-led biochar company based in Kenya, secured $3.5 million in seed funding to scale its operations. Other African carbon removal startups, such as Octavia Carbon, which builds direct air capture machines in Kenya, have also attracted significant funding and recognition.
This growing ecosystem of climate technology companies reflects a broader recognition that Africa has unique advantages in the carbon removal space. The continent’s abundant agricultural biomass, combined with its need for soil restoration and rural economic development, creates opportunities for solutions that deliver multiple benefits simultaneously.
The science supports this approach. Recent research published in the journal Land Use Policy describes biochar as offering a “triple-win” solution for soil resilience, climate mitigation, and waste valorisation in African agriculture. The study’s authors argue that scaling biochar requires coordinated action across policy, finance, carbon markets, and capacity building—exactly the kind of ecosystem that BIG is helping to build through its commercial operations.
However, significant barriers remain. Policy misalignment, limited farmer awareness, and underdeveloped value chains continue to impede the widespread adoption of biochar across the continent. Only about 15 per cent of South African farmers are familiar with biochar’s benefits, for example. Expanding awareness and building trust in the technology will require sustained effort from companies like BIG, as well as support from governments and development organisations.
A Significant Milestone For Biochar Industry Group (BIG)
The $1.5 million pre-seed round is a significant milestone for BIG, but it is important to recognise that this is still a small amount of capital for industrial infrastructure. As analysts have noted, the company will need to demonstrate that individual sites can generate enough carbon credit and biochar revenue to finance expansion.
The carbon credit market, while growing rapidly, is also complex and volatile. Prices for carbon removal credits vary widely depending on the quality and durability of the removal, and buyers are increasingly demanding rigorous verification and transparency. BIG’s emphasis on “independently auditable, high-integrity carbon removal credits” is a strength, but it also means the company must invest in sophisticated monitoring and verification systems.
The company’s connection to Releaf Earth provides an important proof point. At Releaf, the founders already delivered verified carbon-removal credits from Nigerian biochar production to Salesforce through Milkywire. This track record demonstrates that the technology works and that the credits can meet the high standards demanded by international buyers.
Looking ahead, BIG’s success will depend on its ability to replicate its model across multiple sites efficiently. Each new partnership with a food processor requires careful planning, equipment installation, staff training, and the establishment of relationships with local farmers who will use the biochar. This is labour-intensive work, but it is also the kind of work that creates lasting local capacity and generates employment in rural communities.
