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Tanzania: Biofuel Policy On Drawing Boards - Government
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The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Samuel Kamndaya
Tanzania is preparing a biofuel policy. That is happening at a time when eight investors have applied for licences to set up biofuel projects worth Sh131.7808 million and create 6,553 jobs.
Deputy Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives minister David Mathayo said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the sector would be developed after preparing the policy.
"It is the policy that will be guiding us in the development process," he said Dr Mathayo.
The document will be ready before the end of this year and will guide the Government on the locations to be given to investors to prevent scramble for land.
"We have enough land. It is therefore meaningless to have investors who will be scrambling for land that is already given to villagers.
They have to cultivate their own virgin land," he said. According to him, the system will ensure that the country has enough land for posterity.
The utmost goal of the policy will be to make sure that the biofuel industry is not developed at expense of the country's food security.
"It is the aim of the policy to guide us that no land that is suitable for maize or rice is given to investors who want to develop large-scale jatropha plantations," he said.
But a study by the Africa Biodiversity Network says the biofuel project development and selection practices in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Benin could have disastrous environmental and humanitarian impacts.
With a surface area of 94.3 million hectares, Tanzania has 19.1 million hectares of arable land of which only 5.1 million hectares are cultivated annually.
The rest of the arable land is either reserved for used for pasture.
Food prices have been rising globally, and use of crops for biofuels is partly blamed for the problems.
In a report titled Africa Economic Outlook, launched on Sunday in Maputo ahead of a two-day African Development Bank (AfDB) annual summit this week, the AfDB noted that besides the rising prices of crude oil in the last three months, prices of some major food crops have nearly doubled.
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According to the report, rice prices increased from $373 a tonne to $760 while that of maize rose from $171 a tonne to $220 in the last three months.
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