The Chairman of Friends of the Earth (FOE) has challenged African leaders to fight the West in its attempts to use the Jatropha plant and agricultural-based renewable energy generation alternatives.
The workshop was a side event organized by FOE to "discuss challenges pertaining to biofuel development," "myth of marginal land right" and "global food crisis, policy option for Africa." Nnimmo Bassey, chairman of FOE, said: "The drive for biofuel is one of the major factors that have contributed to food crisis worldwide, between 2008 and 2009. This came about because 5% of grains, which can feed a village for a year were used to fuel machines."
He cited an example in Swaziland, where a company called D 1 Oils Jatropha, convinced local farmers to cultivate the plant because it does not need much water to thrive.
Bassey said the farmers who took the bait, later found out that they had to water the plant on a regular basis. "For a continent that has water shortage this is surely an avoidable problem."
He said the time had come for the continent to explore other sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power. Cheryl Agyepong, Programme Coordinator of FOE said the drive for biofuels as an alternative renewable energy had increased as the world was running short of fossil resources.
She said currently, the European Union had set a mandatory target of about 5% of motor fuel from biofuels by 2010, while the US was aiming at 28.4 billion liters of the alternative fuel by 2012. Agyepong said the notion by Europeans that Africa and Asia had vast marginal lands for the cultivation of Jatropha was not true. She said in 2008, a senior World Bank economist in a report stated that biofuels accounted for 75% of food price increases globally.