Ripple Africa says 98 percent of Malawians still rely on firewood as a source of energy for their cooking, a development which is a major contributing factor to rampant deforestation in the country.

Ripple Africa Country Director, Force Ngwira, made the remarks during a tour of some of its interventions under their tree planting and efficient cooking stoves projects being implemented in Mzimba south.

Said Ngwira, " So after noting that there is wide spread deforestation in Mzimba we decided to implement two projects, we have a project that promotes the use of efficient stoves also known as changu changu moto which uses less firewood, we are also doing tree planting among the communities we are working in."

Through its tree planting project, the organization has been planting 3 million trees in the district for the past 5 years with a survival rate of over 95 percent according to Ngwira.

Through the project one the farmers Chiza Joseph Tembo who has planted about 22000 pine trees in Kanyalu Village in the area of Inkosi Mzikubola under Ripple Africa's tree planting project expressed excitement with the survival rate of trees.

Said Tembo, "am very thankful with Ripple Africa for assisting me to plant these trees as you can see they are hybrid and in about 10 to 15 years I will be harvesting hopefully I will make a lot of money"

The District Commissioner for M’mbelwa district Council, Rodgers Newa has commended the efforts being made by Ripple Africa in conserving the environment through planting trees.

Said Neba, "Am very much impressed with what Ripple Africa is doing bearing in mind some strategies that they have put in place to make sure that the trees survive from the day being planted as we have witnessed that the survival rate is above 90% which is not common with similar interventions that only come to plant trees without taking care of them”.

He called on other stakeholders to emulate what Ripple Africa has done especially in managing the planted trees so as to be registering over 95 percent survival rate.

Ripple Africa introduced the tree planting project in 2016 in Mzimba district and targets to plant about 3 million trees annually in 40 years to come and so far they have planted trees at Jenda, Raiply and Mzuzu.