TheBioenergySite Latest News
Tanzania: Food vs. Fuel Causing Confusion
TANZANIA - Last year, by one estimate, the government of Mozambique received bids from foreign investors to buy a remarkable 110,000 square kilometres of land, more than an eighth of the entire country, reports NineMsn.More than a century after the last "scramble for Africa", when European imperial powers fought to colonise the continent, the global boom in biofuels is causing a stampede into one of the world's biggest areas of uncultivated terrain.
On paper, Tanzania is perfect for producing biofuels. An oil importer, it is desperate for cheap fuel, jobs and export earnings. It has vast amounts of land suitable for agriculture – 88m hectares (880,000 sq km) at one approximation, of which only 6 per cent is currently farmed. Some is vulnerable to drought, but certain plants such as jatropha, whose seeds are used to make biodiesel, can survive with little water in relatively poor soils. And the special duty-free access to the European Union market that Tanzania enjoys as an African country gives it an edge over Brazilian ethanol exporters.
It is in villages like Mtamba, in the Coast Province of Tanzania, that such options are being weighed. Sun Biofuels, a UK-based company active in Ethiopia, is acquiring 8,000 hectares to grow jatropha, part of a plan to plant more than 40,000 hectares. But what emerges from conversations with villagers and officials is how little information filters down to them.
Peter Auge, general manager of Sun Biofuels Tanzania, says the plantation will not take land out of food production. The land is not at present being farmed, containing only a few fruit and coconut trees for which he is paying compensation. He says it will provide year-round jobs tending and harvesting the plants at $3 (€1.90, £1.50) a day, relatively good pay for the area, and 5 per cent of its budget will be spent on social infrastructure such as schools.
The village, belatedly informed of Sun Biofuels' intentions by the district authorities, decided in a hastily convened meeting in early 2006 to welcome the investment. Although they have been told there will be employment on the jatropha plantation, they do not know what work and at what pay. Only one villager has even seen jatropha before. "There has not been a lot of actual opposition, but it has been a period of uncertainties," says Hamisi Rubalati, the local government executive officer for the village. "People in the village have started being worried about the employment because they are not qualified for many jobs."
With the price of staple foods such as maize and rice in Tanzania doubling in the past year, second thoughts are setting in. In the neighbouring Rufiji province, Sekab, a Swedish company, is bidding for 50,000 hectares on the banks of a lake to grow sugarcane and build distilleries to export ethanol to Europe. Unlike jatropha, sugarcane sucks up a great deal of water and requires fertile soil.
The food versus fuel debate is exercising governments around the world. But in countries like Tanzania, it seems to be generating confusion rather than clarity.
View the NineMsn story by clicking here.
TheBioenergySite News Desk
Latest Bioenergy Industry News
Cooperation Agreements for Brazil and Canada
NTR in Algae Joint Venture
Symposium on Future of Biodiesel- Consumers Energy Wind Farm Plan
- Commissioner at International Conference on Biofuels
Daewoo Logistics Biofuel Project for Madagascar
Biodiesel from Urban Waste- Wind Farm Plan for Brazil
Egypt Wants Brazilian know-how in Biofuels- Inland Empire Oilseeds Starts Biodiesel Production
