Nairobi — The water hyacinth, that beautiful green floating weed with pink flowers, is the bane of the lacustrine communities that derive their livelihood from Lake Victoria.

From hampering fishing activities to crippling water transport, the weed is seen as the biggest problem besetting these communities. In fact, The World Bank has been funding the destruction of water hyacinth for the last eight years, and Kenyan scientists have deployed predatory beetles to control the weed. But a local scientist sees it differently.

He has proven that the plant can be put to uses that have direct economic benefits that can positively impact on the communities that loath it so much.

Mr Simon Mwaura, a chemist, has invented ways in which the water hyacinth can be used as the main raw material for making organic fertilisers and animal feeds. Presently, his liquid fertiliser is being used in flower farms.

"Use of the water hyacinth in making organic fertilisers and animal feed could put a stop to the use of animal components or parts in manufacturing animal feeds," he says.

Under the flagship of his company, Two-M-Products Kenya Limited, Mr Mwaura has been manufacturing liquid fertiliser and feed pellets since 1997. He has so far managed to come up with 10 products extracted from water hyacinth harvested manually from the Nairobi Dam.

He started the project in 1996 when he first saw people removing weeds from turbines at the Owen Falls Dam in Jinja, Uganda. Then, he did not know that the weed was the hyacinth, but when he came back to Nairobi, he learnt of the water hyacinth in Lake Victoria and recalled the Jinja weed.

When he got wind of the World Bank's search for organisations that could uproot the water hyacinth that had choked Lake Victoria, as a chemist, he set out to find out the useful components that could be extracted from the hyacinth.

Initial studies showed that water hyacinth had up to 34 per cent of crude proteins, carbohydrates and fibre, which is important in animal feeds.

Above all, he realised that water hyacinth was 95 per cent water which had a high content of nutrients like phosphates, potassium, nitrogen, calcium, iron, copper, zinc and magnesium, which are used in making fertiliser and are essential plant and soil nutrients.

Using homespun methods, he successfully extracted five nutrients from the plant tissue and took the samples to KEPHIS (Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate) in 2000. KEPHIS analysed the nutrients and found them to be rich in organic fertiliser.

He later used the plant tissue in formulating animal feeds. The animal feeds were analysed by Unga Limited, which realised that they had a high content of food protein.

The food protein was established to be 17.6 per cent of 100 per cent water hyacinth plant tissue before extraction of nutrients that form the basis of organic fertiliser.

After extraction of nutrients, the crude protein level dropped to 11 per cent with a moisture content of 56 per cent of the plant tissue.

In the process, it was discovered that the high incidence of constipation in animals when fed on hyacinth was due to the high content of minerals like copper, zinc, iron, manganese and others.

Mr Mwaura also extracted concentrated liquid supplement salt containing 22 per cent sodium, which could be used as a salt supplement for animal feeds.

Aside from using substances like sodium, ammonia, potassium to extract nutrients from the water hyacinth plant tissue, Mr Mwaura has been using a prototype hyacinth processing machine, which can produce 1000 litres of liquid fertiliser and 500 kilogrammes of pellets, both as fertiliser and supplement salt.

The prototype machine is his own design and is patented in both Kenya and Canada. The equipment has a processing unit, a drying facility, a fertiliser extraction unit and a granulator for granulating both pellets for animal supplement and pellet fertiliser.

Fabricated on site, the portable machine has two electric generators and a wheel loader to flatten out the area where the hyacinth processing factory will be erected.

The equipment comes with a fabricated warehouse of 10,000 square feet and when used, Mr Mwaura says the harvesting, processing and utilisation of water hyacinth could greatly contribute to the economy of the country by creating 865 jobs.

"Using the equipment, 263 acres of hyacinth could generate 66 litres of liquid fertiliser at a cost of Sh450 per litre, with an annual turnover of Sh 31 billion per year," he says.

The equipment goes for Sh17.3million, which includes raw materials to produce 5.4 million litres of liquid fertiliser that takes 30 days of production at a rate of 180,000 litres per day.

Fabrication of the equipment is being done in Canada, due to the need for use of stainless steel, which is not locally available in large quantities. However, Mwaura's Two-M-Products Kenya Limited is the holder of both the local and international patents.

The company hopes to set up a factory in Kisumu in the next three months and sell the machine to an institution in the lakeside city.

However, the extraction technology will remain the product of Two-M-Products, which will pay the institution Sh20 per litre extracted from the water hyacinth and market the products both locally and internationally.

The main product to be exported will be the 100 per cent plant tissue, which can be used as a desert binder to improve the quality of desert sand. The plant tissue can also retain water and improve soil fertility in both arid and semi-arid areas across the world.