Nigeria is known for being one of the top oil producers in the world. A local startup is however making strides in the green energy market with its biofuel gel that is helping households in the West African nation reduce carbon emission by cutting on paraffin use in their cooking.

Femi Oye, the co-founder and chief executive of Green Energy & Biofuels, a Lagos-based eco-friendly company says he has been able to introduce over 500,000 families to a new cooking biogel that comes from sawdust leftovers and water hyacinths, a fast growing water-body weed.

The biogel has become a hit in the Nigerian market and has got recognition from the country’s central bank, which extended a $300,000 grant to Green Energy & Biofuel in July.

“If the end product is oxygen then it will definitely be good for me,” Irene Adepitan, one of the biogel user who suffers from asthma told Al Jazeera.

Oye says non-renewable sources of energy in Nigeria – such as oil – will be displaced by renewable energy in the future, although it will be a slow process. Green technology, he says, is the key and will “take [the] centre stage over time”.

“We could create a world that is clean and is sustainable. That has helped my thinking in ways by which I want to invest,” Oye told Al Jazeera.