Seed-balls that can save Kenya’s Deforestation Crisis

Teddy Kinyanjui is the co-founder of Seedballs Kenya.

A seedball is a black marble-sized pellet: a single tree seed coated in a charcoal shell to stop it from being eaten by insects and animals.

These “seedballs” are helping replant trees and grass in the barren grounds in small schools that Teddy visited to teach children the importance of planting trees.

The seeds have mostly been planted during the dry season but once the rains come, the water will wash away the coating and the seeds will germinate.

“One seedball has the potential to grow another million trees because if it becomes a mother tree in one area that’s been over-exploited and very degraded, it will start re-seeding some of these places,” says Teddy.

Replanting a school’s grounds may be child’s play but replanting a country is a mammoth task. Kenya is estimated to be cutting down 5.6 million trees and shrubs a year according to the Green Africa Foundation.

Teddy and his team have come up with this super solution as a way of solving Kenya’s Deforestation Crisis. They have also come up with a solution known as Aerial Seeding.

“Aeroplanes and helicopters are probably the only way to get the job done quickly and in this day and age with GPS guidance and precision technology you can get things to exactly where you need to: so the right seed in the right place, at the right time,” says Teddy.

He has persuaded a number of helicopter charter companies to keep bags of seedballs under the seats so passengers can join the push to reforest Kenya.

“It means that you can lower the cost of tree planting incredibly compared to the traditional method of digging holes and transporting seedlings.”

“The scale of the problem in Kenya is absolutely incredible,” says Teddy. “There are tens of millions of acres that have really been degraded and are coming to a tipping point almost of no return in terms of being able to support human and animal life.”

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