Africa Becoming a Biofuel Battleground

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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.

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