(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

deductions to the company.” 348
Group Number of people affected Benefits Breakdown
of added
value
Addax Bioenergy One company with one
major shareholder
Return of USD 53
million per year.
Workers 2000 Sierra Leonean Yearly wages:
workers plus some between USD 1.1
expatriates
million and USD 4
million (daily wages of
USD 2.3)
Land owners A few hundreds (out of a Land lease fees per
total of 14'000 project year of USD 113’000.
affected persons)
This corresponds to
less that USD 1 per
person per month.
District Councils 2 District Councils and 3 Land lease fees per
and Chiefdom Chiefdom Administrators year of USD 50’900.
Administrators
Government NA Land lease fees per
year of USD 12’700.
No corporate income
tax in the first 13
years. Water fees of
USD 54’000 per year.
93%-98%
2%-7%
0.2%
0.1%
0.2%
Local suppliers Unknown. Unknown. NA
Total value added USD 53.3-57.2 million 100%
This repartition of the added value is made possible thanks to often poorly paid jobs,
even by local standards. When investors create wage employment, workers’ income is
2 times to 10 times lower to what the average smallholder could get. 349 For instance, in
the case of Addax Bioenergy, casual labourers are paid only two out of three weeks,
they have no job security and no social or other benefit. 350
This unfairness of the deals affects primarily the rural poor who are the losers of
this “biofuel politics.” 351 The World Bank for instance concluded that many of the
land deals it reviewed “failed to live up to expectations and, instead of generating
sustainable benefits, contributed to asset loss and left local people worse off than they
would have been without the investment”. 352 The FAO has also shown how focus on
investments in high-potential areas and on irrigation, mechanisation and crop
specialization (mono-cropping) for marketed commodities and export crops – typically
the kind of investments that result from biofuel policies – have largely benefited
71