Sugar Returns to Angola
For the last 30 years, the African nation of Angola has imported all of its sugar. Sugar cane used to be a thriving business in the nation, but the development of the oil industry and civil wars drove that industry out of the country. Now, in an attempt to create new jobs, revive the agricultural community, decentralize industry beyond Luanda, and get involved in alternative fuel sources, 30,000 hectares of land in the province of Malanje have been slated for new sugar cane crop development in Angola. Read more about Biomass to Biofuels Market Potential
The sugar cane plantation is expected to be able to produce 280,000 tons of sugar annually. In addition, the leaves, waste heat, and the 30,000 cubic meters of ethanol from the cane residue will generate about 217 megawatts of electricity each year.
“This is a very important project for our country. Sugar used to be made in Angola before independence, now it is 100 percent imported, but soon Angola will have locally produced sugar again. We are re-launching agriculture, decentralizing the industrial sector away from the capital Luanda into the interior, making jobs and creating new areas of knowledge and training,” says Rui Gourgel, president of Biocom. Biocom is backing the $220 million project, which is a joint venture between Angola’s state oil company Sonangol, the private Angolan group Damer, and the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.
But there are those who are critical of this move by Angola, which presently has no laws for governing biofuels production or regulating how land can be used for doing such. “These type of plantations use a lot of land. We need to be sure local people won’t be left competing for land and resources like water,” says Sergio Calundungo, who is the director of the Angolan group Action for Rural Development and Environment (ADRA).
There is also concern among world governance bodies that African nations’ tendencies to invest in non-food crops and have foreign companies do their work for them could cause problems by destabilizing the local communities and economy. Although sugar cane is clearly a food crop, the emphasis being placed on the creation of biofuels and the partnership with a foreign company is troubling to critics. There is also the fear that local Angolan citizens may come to think that their lands are being taken away from them, causing rioting or sabotage of the cane crops, as Calundungo alludes to.
But, creating jobs, a new staple food crop indigenously grown, and a non-oil source of fuel and revenues sounds like wondrous ideas to people like Gourgel.
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