Biofuels can free Africa of its 'oil curse' - expert

For the African continent, oil is a real curse: it spurs corruption, civil conflict and resource wars, it displaces local populations, fuels social inequality and has a terrible environmental record. The ongoing civil conflicts in the Niger Delta, the destabilisation in Chad, the war in Sudan or mass-corruption in Angola are just some illustrations of the disruptive effects of the oil industry in Africa.

Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade recently told oil companies in no uncertain terms to radically change their impact on the societies in which they do business, or leave the continent alltogether (earlier post).

Biofuels offer a radically different paradigm, says Dr Keith Myers, an expert on African oil and gas production at London's Chatham House. (Earlier we presented the differences between the two paradimgs in an ideal-type binary way - see graph, click to enlarge). Myers thinks the alliance between the US and Brazil to promote ethanol and other biofuels as an alternative to petrol could offer African countries with a much needed new export opportunity.

"Many African countries need to diversify their economies and they would welcome a demand for new products such as biofuel," Myers told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Myers cited major oil producer Nigeria as a prime example of an African nation that could benefit from an increased demand for biofuels by the likes of the United States.

"Oil has come to dominate Nigeria's economy to such an extent that the country's once prosperous agricultural sector has been neglected. International demand for bio-fuels could revive the country's agriculture, help diversify its economy and provide a new export opportunity," Myers explained:
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Bush's "greening", as the president's sudden interest in environment friendly energy sources has been dubbed, is seen as an attempt to make the United States depend less on the troubled Middle East region from where it derives much of its oil supplies.

The extension of such policies to Africa can be interpreted as an attempt by Washington to curb energy-hungry China's influence in the continent where it is expanding its investments.

With African nations having in China a ready-made export market for their current production in oil and gas, doubts have been cast on the continent's willingness to break lucrative ties with Beijing in favour of unexplored bio-fuel arrangements with the United States and Europe.

But according to Myers, who points out that only 10 percent of Africa's energy exports go to China, the extent of Beijing's business links with Africa has been overstated.

"African nations still export most of their energy products to other markets, and a demand in those markets for new products such as bio-fuels for which Africa has a great potential represents a much-needed opportunity to generate income from new exports," he concluded.