Africa Becoming a
Biofuel Battleground
By Horand Knaup & Der Spiegel
Western companies are
pushing to acquire vast stretches of African land to meet the world's biofuel
needs. Local farmers and governments are being showered with promises. But is
this just another form of economic colonialism?.
Everything will turn out
alright. Correction: everything is going to get better. There will be new
roads, a new school, a pharmacy, even a proper water supply. Most of all, there
will be jobs -- 5,000, at the very least. "If there are jobs for us, then
it's a good thing," says Juma Njagu, 26, who hopes to be able to leave his
meager existence as a planter and charburner behind soon. Njagu lives in
Mtamba, a village of about 1,100 souls in Tanzania's Kisarawe district, about
70 kilometers (43 miles) south-west of Dar es Salaam, the capital and largest
city. Mtamba, accessible by dirt road, is a place where people scrape by on a
bit of farming, a bit of fishing and the production of charcoal. There isn't
much else in Mtamba.
That could change if the
British firm Sun Biofuels goes ahead with plans to produce biodiesel fuel from
"Jatropha curcas," an energy plant with a high oil content, which it
hopes to plant on Kisarawe's farmland. The Tanzanian government has granted the
British firm the use of 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) of sparsely populated
farmland, or enough land to cover about 12,000 soccer fields, for a period of
99 years -- free of charge. In return, the company will invest about $20
million (€13 million) to build roads and schools, bringing a modicum of
prosperity to the region. Sun Biofuels is not alone. In fact, half a dozen
other companies from the Netherlands, the United States, Sweden, Japan, Canada
and Germany have already sent their scouts to Tanzania. Prokon, a German
company known primarily for its wind turbines, has already begun growing
jatropha curcas on a large scale. It expects to have 200,000 hectares (494,000
acres) -- an area about the size of Luxembourg -- under cultivation throughout
Tanzania soon.
A gold rush mentality
has taken hold -- not just in East Africa but across the entire continent. In
Ghana, the Norwegian firm Biofuel Africa has secured farming rights for 38,000
hectares (93,860 acres), and Sun Biofuels is also doing business in Ethiopia and
Mozambique. Kavango BioEnergy, a British company, plans to invest millions of
euros in northern Namibia. Western companies are turning up in Malawi and
Zambia, where they plan to produce diesel fuel and ethanol from jatropha
curcas, palm oil or sugar cane. Foreign investors have their eye on 11 million
hectares (27 million acres) in Mozambique -- more than one-seventh of the
country's total area -- for growing energy plants. The government in Ethiopia
has even made 24 million hectares (59 million acres) available.
The consequences of this
boom are dramatic. Experts agree that the worldwide push to grow energy plants
is on overwhelming factor in the global explosion of food prices. According to
one study by the World Bank, as much as 75 percent of the increase could be
attributable to this change in the types of crops being farmed. Many farmers in
industrialized countries are more than happy to accept government subsidies for
corn or rapeseed, but this comes at the cost of the cultivation of wheat,
potatoes and legumes.
Oil plants are not
competing with intensively farmed land in Africa -- yet. Investors argue that
the land they are using is uncultivated or underused. But rising food prices
and population growth will also increase pressure in the southern hemisphere to
convert unused land to agricultural use. Biofules are profitable when oil is
expensive.
For investors, growing
energy plants in Africa is highly profitable. Crude oil will become scarce in
the foreseeable future, so that easy-to-produce biofuel comes at just the right
time. At an estimated annual yield of 2,500 liters per hectare, Sun Biofuels is
in it for the long haul in Tanzania. Production becomes profitable as soon as
the price of a barrel of crude oil exceeds $100 (€69) on the world market. A
barrel currently goes for just over $100. Africa offers oil farmers virtually
ideal conditions for their purposes: underused land in many places, low land
prices, ownership that is often unclear and, most of all, regimes capable of
being influenced.
The land is unusable,
says the Ethiopian energy and mining minister in Addis Ababa, the country's
capital. "It's just marginal land," say officials at the Ministry of
Energy and Mineral Resources in Dar es Salaam. "The whole thing is nothing
but positive," says the district administrator of Kisarawe, who is
responsible for the Sun Biofuels project. "We have convinced the
people." In his rudimentary office, which lacks both a computer and a copy
machine, he leafs through the planning documents. In none of these places are
the needs of local residents taken into account. In Ghana, BioFuel Africa
wrested away land clearing and usage rights from a village chief who could
neither read nor write. The man gave his consent with his thumbprint. The
weekly newspaper Public Agenda felt reminded of the "darkest days of
colonialism." The Ghanaian environmental protection agency eventually put
a stop to the clear-cutting, but only after 2,600 hectares (6,422 acres) of
forest had been cut down.
In Tanzania, while there
are hopes, there is also plenty of reason to be skeptical about promises that
everything will improve. In April 2006, Sun Biofuels claimed that it had
received formal approval for cultivation from 10 of the 11 affected villages.
At that point, however, several communities were not even aware of the plans,
while others had attached conditions to their consent. A village head
complained, in writing, to the district administration that Sun Biofuels had
cleared and marked off land without even contacting the village elders.
In Dar es Salaam, Peter
Auge, general manager of Sun Biofuels Tanzania, sits in his office. He is a
casual, straightforward South African. "It is true," he says,
"that we were a little reserved with our information policy." There
are still many unknowns, says Auge, adding that he doesn't want to read in the
paper that "the project is two years behind schedule." Auge promises
social investments, although they are not part of the agreements at this point.
Even when it comes to compensation for the people living on the land, which the
government insists must be paid, the investors are getting an exceedingly good
deal. They offered the equivalent of about €450,000, a ridiculous price for
the 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) that they can now use for almost a century.
Seventy kilometers (43
miles) farther south, on the Rufiji River, thousands of residents are being
forced to move to make way for the Swedish company Sekab's plans to grow
sugarcane, a highly water-intensive crop, on at least 9,000 hectares (22,230
acres) and then distill it into ethanol. Five thousand hectares (12,350 acres)
have already been approved. The river and the wetlands along its banks are the
only source of drinking water for thousands of people, especially during the
dry season. Sekab also plans to tap this reservoir to irrigate its plantations.
Transparency? Nonexistent. Compensation? None whatsoever. Information? A scarce
commodity. When residents attending an informational event asked about
compensation payments, they were told curtly: "You will get what you are
entitled to."
The PR machine is all
the more active, even in poor countries like Tanzania. Naturally South African
national Josephine Brennan, who is in charge of public relations for Sekab in
Dar es Salaam, sees only good things for Tanzania's future. Farming for biofuel
will enable the country to build new schools and new roads, which translate
into better opportunities for Tanzanians, says Brennan. According to Brennan,
small farmers will also be able to earn more money in the future by growing
biofuel-ready plants, and up to three million people in Tanzania alone will be
lifted out of poverty. With its two million hectares of potential cropland,
Tanzania, says Brennan, has as much growth potential "as the Celtic Tiger,
Ireland." Finally, she is convinced that "the world needs
Tanzania." But Brennan's rosy predictions do not reflect opinions in East
Africa. A study on energy plants in Tanzania, conducted by the German Agency
for Technical Cooperation, lists a host of negative side effects. What is more,
this is not the first time that white investors have promised prosperity for
Tanzania.
With similarly enticing
promises, small farmers were talked out of their land several decades ago to
make way for coffee plantations. In the 1990s, foreign mining companies arrived
in Tanzania to dig for gold. "They promised us jobs, new roads, new wells
and schools," says journalist Joseph Shayo. "And what happened? No
schools, no wells and few jobs, which were low-paying jobs, to boot." To
make matters worse, large mining zones were fenced off and became inaccessible
to the original residents.
In a recently published
study on the "Biofuel Industry in Tanzania," journalist Khoti Kamanga
of the University of Dar es Salaam warns against the side effects of energy
plantations. The population, Kamanga writes, is usually uninformed, while the
cultivation of energy plants usually goes hand-in-hand with forced
resettlement. According to Kamanga, it is very likely that ethanol production
will also affect food prices in Tanzania, with the country's dependency on food
imports growing even further. In Dar es Salaam, the government has now
recognized that the boom also comes with problems. "Energy plants cannot
be an alternative to food production," said President Jakaya Kikwete,
responding to widespread resentment in his country over high food prices. But
the energy farmers remain unimpressed. Sun Biofuels and Sekab each want to
expand their production to 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) -- as soon as possible.
Africason
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