BIG raises $1.5m to turn African farm waste into carbon removal

Biochar Industrial Group (BIG), a climate-tech startup founded by Releaf Earth executives, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to turn agricultural waste from African food factories into carbon-removal credits.

The company will use the funding to deploy pyrolysis equipment at food-processing facilities, where it will convert waste such as nut shells, husks, and cobs into biochar—a charcoal-like material that can store the carbon contained in the original biomass waste. BIG will finance and operate the equipment itself, while the factories supply the waste and receive a share of the resulting value.

BREEGA, an early-stage venture capital firm, led the funding round, with participation from the Catalyst Fund. The Mulago Foundation also provided non-dilutive funding. BIG will also use the capital to hire engineering, operations, logistics, and carbon-verification staff and build systems to monitor and verify the carbon removed through its process.

Africa generates more than 3 billion tonnes of agricultural waste each year, including nut shells, husks, cobs, stalks, and sawdust. Much of that waste has little value to the factories that produce it and can release carbon dioxide as it decomposes. Over 80% of agricultural lands in Africa are degraded, which limits productivity. BIG wants to tackle both problems by turning agricultural waste into biochar, which stores carbon and can be added to soil to improve it.

BIG’s model takes agricultural waste, turns it into a carbon-storing material called biochar, and sells carbon credits generated from the process. The biochar can then be used as a soil treatment on farms. The Middle East and Africa’s biochar market is predicted to exceed $450 million by 2032 as demand for durable carbon-removal credits grows.

 “Africa has natural advantages to lead the most scalable and cost-effective biomass-based carbon removal globally,” said Ikenna Nzewi, chief executive officer of Biochar Industrial Group. “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.”  

BIG was founded in 2026 by Nzewi, Uzoma Ayogu, and Isaiah Udotong, who have spent almost a decade building industrial agricultural infrastructure at Releaf Earth, a Y Combinator-backed agro-processing company.

At the centre of the business operations is what BIG calls Biochar-as-a-Service, or BaaS. Under the model, a food factory supplies its agricultural waste while BIG finances, deploys, and operates the pyrolysis equipment on-site. The startup staffs the units locally and handles the processing, carbon measurement, verification, and credit issuance. 

The waste is fed into a continuous pyrolysis machine that heats organic material at temperatures above 600°C in an oxygen-deprived environment. This process, called pyrolysis, changes the biomass into biochar rather than allowing it to decompose. BIG says the carbon can remain stored for hundreds to thousands of years, depending on how the biochar is used.

According to BIG, the biochar is used to generate carbon-removal credits that can be independently audited and sold to buyers in international carbon markets. BIG also sells the physical biochar as an agricultural input and can be applied to degraded farmland to help improve soil quality, according to the company. 

The company is targeting large agricultural processors that generate at least 2,500 tonnes of waste annually. BIG is interested in waste such as nut shells, husks, cobs, and other agricultural residues with limited value in their existing uses.  

“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,” said Tosin Faniro-Dada, Partner at BREEGA. “It’s the product of a founding team – Ikenna, Uzoma, and Isaiah – who spent nearly a decade building and operating industrial infrastructure across Nigeria with Releaf Earth. We’re proud to back them as they scale that same execution discipline into carbon removal at a continental scale.”

BIG also plans to deploy digital Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems using continuous monitoring to create data trails that track biomass processing and the resulting carbon removal. The company said its goal is to produce independently auditable carbon-removal credits for international buyers. 

BIG operates in a market with other companies turning agricultural residues into biochar and carbon-removal products, including Biochar Solutions Africa in Nigeria, PathBeing, and Kenya’s Biosorra and Tera. Globally, companies such as Charm Industrial, Graphyte, and Vaulted Deep are developing methods of converting biomass into long-term carbon storage.

The company is not limiting its expansion to a particular set of African countries. BIG says it has already visited potential sites across West Africa and has received enquiries from other parts of the continent. Rather than choosing markets based on geography, it plans to follow the availability of suitable biomass.

“We have a Pan-African mandate and prioritise sites that have an abundance of biomass with low opportunity cost for biochar production,” the company said in the statement. “We have already visited sites throughout West Africa but have received inquiries from every region of the continent. In a nutshell, BIG goes where the biomass takes us.”

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