Food & Climate
The Prosopis juliflora, which thrives in arid environments, has become a tool for refugees in a camp in Djibouti, coming from several countries in Africa, a continent plagued by conflict, as well as Yemen. This tool helps them cook, protect the environment, and enhance their livelihoods.
Through the Greening Humanitarian Response project, implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and funded by the European Union, refugees in the camp received an energy-efficient stove powered by the Prosopis juliflora.
Prosopis juliflora is a thorny shrub 3-5 m or tree growing up to 15 m height. It has a thick rough grey-green bark that becomes scaly with age. The plants are often multi-stemmed and furnished with abundant large and very sharp thorns measuring up to 5 cm. The tree is deeply rooted. The stems are shaped in a “mild zigzag” way with one or two stout thorns at each turn of the stem.
Leaves, are twice-compound (bipinnate) with mostly two, sometimes more pairs of pinnae, 6-8 cm long, 12-25 pairs of oblong leaflets per pinna, 6-16 mm long, 1.5-3.2 mm wide, according to “BioNet“.
This plant reproduces through seed, often once they have passed through the digestive tract of browsers – such as goats, cattle, camels and some wild herbivores. It is spread along water courses and run-off areas during periods of rain and then spreads laterally from these sites, according to a report seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
What is the Ali-Addeh Camp?
Home to 17,000 refugees, The Ali-Addeh camp in Djibouti is a barren and desolate expanse that butts up against the mountains which seem to watch over the settlement like sentinels. The families who have fled here from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen, continue to cook, care and hope, many for more than a decade.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 140 million people around the world are expected to be forcibly displaced and stateless by 2025, driven by conflict, violence, persecution and climate-related shocks—challenges that are compounded by economic turbulence.
In East Africa alone, there are over 5.5 million refugees and asylum seekers and nearly 22 million people face protracted internal displacement. Most live in camps or settlements, often for years, because returning home is not an option.
A report by the Food and Climate Platform (FAO) mentioned one such refugee, Hilina, an Ethiopian woman whose family has been displaced since 1991, and as a result, she has no home to return to.
Since her mother died, Hilina now bears most of the household responsibilities alone. Cooking for her family is among the main ones, and this has traditionally called for a long and dangerous trek to collect firewood.
“The journey to collect wood takes a long time. Starting in the afternoon, to the night. It is very far! Also, children they leave school to collect wood,” she said.
As is the case of the Ali Addeh camp, long-term displacement puts immense pressure on scarce natural resources and can cause tension between displaced and host communities. Forests, water resources, arable land: all of these valued resources are strained by camps that might go up overnight but persist for decades.
Promoting the use of Prosopis juliflora
The challenges that these communities face day by day are access to livelihoods, protection and health risks, and not least, tensions between the host communities and the camp dwellers themselves,” said Indira Joshi, Emergency and Resilience Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). “What is very worrying is the protracted nature of this displacement. So, the question is, what are we, the international community, doing about this?”
One answer comes from the Greening the Humanitarian Response (GHR) project, implemented by FAO in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and funded by the European Union. The project helps displaced people; host communities and local authorities manage natural resources more effectively and improve energy access for cooking and livelihoods.
Traditional cooking methods are not only resource-consuming and time-consuming, they are also potentially hazardous, impacting air quality and exposing families to health risks.
To address this, the GHR project has distributed energy-efficient cookstoves.
“It [the stove] protects us from going far away into the mountains to collect firewood… so now life is easy,” said Hilina.
The project also promotes the use of Prosopis juliflora, an invasive plant species, to make sustainable charcoal for cooking. This reduces the need for firewood and helps manage Prosopis.
“The fact that we are now trying to transform the Prosopis into charcoal is very important so that we limit the degradation of natural resources but also use it rationally,” said Kwami Dzifanu Nyarko-Badohu, FAO Representative in Djibouti.
Arturo Gianvenuti, FAO Agroecological Engineer, notes that the GHR project has also generated valuable baseline data on environmental impact and energy needs. This can help guide more cost-effective interventions that support sustainable forest-based value chains.
The Greening the Humanitarian Response project offers a scalable model for protecting the environment while improving lives—bringing cleaner energy, restored ecosystems and greater resilience to the people living in some of the world’s most vulnerable situations. So far, the project has been implemented in Djibouti, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.