All Roads Lead to Najaf: Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani’s Quiet Impact on Iraq’s 2010 Ballot and its Aftermath

Abstract

To estimate the technical potential of domestic biogas in Africa, two main indicators have been used, the number of households with access to water and the number of domestic cattle per household. Land-use and cattle-type information has been used to correct for pastoral farming practices. With this methodology, the technical potential for domestic biogas for Africa turns out to be 18.5 million installations. At country level, this calculation matches the lower estimates for Ethiopia and Rwanda but overstates the estimates for Senegal, for which more detailed recent feasibility studies are available. This technical potential value on its own provides an incomplete picture on the feasibility of large(r) scale biogas dissemination initiatives. To improve the accuracy, and thus the reliability, four supporting “aspect areas” –development, energy, health & sanitation and environment- have been assessed from a biogas perspective. For each of these aspect areas, a “Biogas Feasibility Index” is suggested, providing an indication of the situation of the aspect area relative to domestic biogas.