Zimbabwe: Bio-Diesel Plant - a Case of 'Celebrating a Still Birth'

Zimbabwe Standard (Harare)

Zimbabwe Standard (Harare)

26 November 2007
Posted to the web 26 November 2007

Caiphas Chimhete

As you drive along old Mazowe Road, northwest out of Harare, your
attention is drawn to a large, colourful billboard: it announces the
existence of a new bio-diesel plant, "the first in Africa".

The huge plant was commissioned amid pomp and fanfare by President
Robert Mugabe recently.

The billboard says: "Bio-Diesel Processing Plant in Zimbabwe: Towards
food self-sufficiency; oiling the wheels of the nation."

There is no smoke billowing from the tall chimneys. A few technicians
mill around the silent plant.

The plant will become operational in two years when the Jatropha
planted last year matures.

Touted by political leaders as the panacea to the fuel crisis, the
plant probably deserves little of the hype.

Haunted by an eight-year fuel crisis caused by the foreign currency
crunch, the government sees the project as a likely solution.

The plant is a joint effort between the government and Yuon Woo
Investments of South Korea.

But experts are hesitant to sound as enthusiastic as the politicians.

The government has no capacity to support farmers to grow enough
Jatropha, cotton, sunflower and soya bean seed to produce bio-diesel,
say the experts.

They say the project will take "several years" to contribute to the
country's fuel needs, if ever it will.

It's ironic that the plant was commissioned a month after a United
Nations food expert called for "a five-year moratorium" on bio-fuel
production.

But the government insists that the plant will ease fuel shortages.

That would happen when the plant is operating at full throttle,
producing 100 million litres of bio-diesel a year.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Dr Gideon Gono, at the same
high-profile, glitzy ceremony, noted that the success of the
bio-diesel project, to produce 90-100 litres of diesel annually, would
depend entirely on agriculture.

"These peak production levels impose a challenge on the farming
community to produce adequate feedstock of oil seeds to meet demand
throughout the year," he said.

But an agriculture expert said it would take years for the bio-diesel
plant to produce "meaningful quantities" of diesel.

"Right now we don't have enough seed for soya beans and cotton and
where would they get the Jatropha? It would be another white
elephant," said the expert who refused to be named, as this was a
"sensitive issue".

Another expert said: "We would need a separate Zimbabwe to do that. We
cannot convert arable land to grow Jatropha; otherwise we would
experience serious food shortages. There is no land for that."

Zimbabwe has planted 100 hectares of Jatropha since last year,
according to reports.

The land invasions of 2000 reduced oil seed production: soya bean from
150 000 to 60 000 tonnes; sunflower from 40 000 in 1994 to 20 000
tonnes in 2006; groundnuts from about 95 000 to 90 000 tonnes.

"But still," said the expert, "these figures are too little to make
any meaningful contribution to produce diesel. What they did
(inaugurating the plant) is like celebrating a still-birth."

Land expert Professor Sam Moyo described the project as "quite good"
but said the general fear was that uncontrolled and unregulated
growing of Jatropha would have serious implications on food production
and the environment.


A UN independent expert, Jean Ziegler, last month condemned the
increasing use of crops to produce bio-fuels as replacement for fossil
fuels, saying it was creating food shortages.

Ziegler called for a five-year moratorium on bio-fuel production to
stop what he called a growing "catastrophe" for the poor, which he
called "a crime against humanity". Ziegler said it caused hikes in
prices leading to more hunger.

Ziegler is a sociology professor at the University of Geneva,
Switzerland, and the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200711261670.html