News: When Green goes Commercial: the new colonization of Africa

More than a century after the last “scramble for Africa”, when European powers fought to colonise the continent, there is a new stampede into one of the world’s biggest areas of uncultivated terrain.

Last year, by one estimate, the government of Mozambique received bids from foreign investors to buy 110,000 square kilometres of land, more than an eighth of the entire country.

In neighbouring Tanzania, a Swedish company, is bidding for 50,000 hectares on the banks of a lake in the Rufiji province. And that is just one example.

Why? A rush from European companies to grow biofuel.(Full)

It begs to think if agrable land can not be used for better purposes. Using the same two examples: Tanzania has more than 40 percent of the population in chronic food-deficit regions where irregular rainfall causes recurring food shortages. Mozambique has 660,000 vulnerable people in need food assistance, and suffers from yearly flooding displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

More about biofuel on The Road.

Source: International Aid Workers Today
Picture courtesy Robert Maas/WFP