(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

e imported to the EU to meet the mandate’s targets, which in turn favours a
development of African exports. 221
One of the reasons biofuel feedstocks will growingly originate from Africa is that it
would allow cheaper production, which is, from the perspective of the investors,
necessary to make biofuels viable due to the “low” economic margin under existing EU
policy schemes. 222 The trade agreements mentioned above, which allow free entrance
of products from several African countries, further encourage production in Africa. A
report by the UN Economic Commission for Africa notes that meeting the biofuels
needs of, amongst others, Europe, will require “much farm land which all the countries
do not have in sufficient quantity”, and that, keeping in mind the high cost of biofuels
produced in the European Union, Western African countries “have a real comparative
advantage” and could become “some of the largest biofuels producers/exporters”
thanks to Europe’s demand. 223
Moreover, it has been shown above that a there are massive investments in largescale
biofuel production in Africa, whose scale may not be fully anticipated by
predictive models. It was explained in the chapter on land grabbing that a large
amount of these investments are made by EU investors in Africa. Combined with the
fact that European investors specifically invest in agrofuels while investments coming
from the Middle East are mainly for food production, 224 it appears that there is a large
flow of investments in agrofuels in Africa by European investors. See Annex IV for a
compilation of data from different sources on agrofuel projects in Africa with European
involvement. Surely, a number of these investments are intended for domestic
production, and, in some cases, it might be done in a sustainable way that does not
constitute land grabbing. But there is a strong presumption that most of these
investments are made for exports to Europe, a presumption which is shared by
several authors. 225 The World Bank thus noted in 2009 that Africa has already begun
to attract investments for export production specifically because of the “demand pull”,
and estimated that that Africa could account for about one-third of future ethanol trade
with net-importing regions. 226 Equally, the fact that most investments are made near
big towns or trade centres suggests that the production is intended for export. 227 A
2012 report written for the European Commission considers that Ethiopia, Malawi,
Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, could become important for the
supply of biofuels to the EU. 228 It further explains that the biofuel market in many of
these countries is driven by foreign demand, and that, while jatropha and sugar cane
are the most efficient crops for biofuel, Africa and Latin America are the largest
producers of these biofuel feedstocks. 229
This finding is corroborated by a study by the NGO CIFOR, which reviewed 20
investments in biofuels, and concludes that most of them are export driven, and that,
particularly in Africa, there is a much higher number of foreign investors that in other
regions. 230 Research conducted for Oxfam in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique,
Senegal, and Tanzania also revealed that the majority of agriculture-based land deals
in Africa are for export commodities, including biofuels. 231
As a response, the European Commission argues that when it imports biofuels, it only
does so from a few countries which are the USA, Indonesia, Malaysia, Argentina and
Brazil, but no country in Africa. It thus takes the view that “most of the impacts…would
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