Geographical Indication (GI) options for Ethiopian Coffee and Ghanaian Cocoa

Reflections on the Lack of Biofuel Innovation in Egypt
Scientists and academics
There is no specific research institute or department within a university faculty in
Egypt that specialises in renewable energy or biofuels technology. Biofuel investigations
are usually temporary projects. For example, at some engineering faculties
and/or departments, such as those at Cairo University and the Arab Academy for
Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, there is an interest in the development
of biofuel refineries and in undertaking research to evaluate the quantity
of energy that can be derived from different types of biofuels. In faculties of agriculture,
the departments are mainly focused on studying plants, agricultural waste
or algae and biofuel production methods (e.g. the Department of Animal and
Fish Production, Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University). In environmental
institutes, while research is focused on biofuel production in general, there is a
focus on the environmental impact of biofuels.
The only important domestically generated biofuels patent we were able to
find evidence of was obtained in 2009 by Bahaa Shawky, a professor at the Genetic
Engineering and Biotechnology Research Division at the National Research
Centre (NRC). The invention involves a pre-treatment method for facilitating the
enzyme decomposition of different agricultural waste, e.g. rice straw. Facilitating
enzyme decomposition helps generate sugar, which is then fermented to obtain
bioethanol. 3 The patent was granted in 2009 but has not yet been commercialised
at any level by industry, due in part to lack of government support. According to
Shawky, this invention should ideally be considered for adoption as a national
project, because it could help reuse, for energy production, the 40 million tonnes
of agricultural waste produced annually in Egypt.
At the Faculty of Agriculture of Alexandria University, it was found that
some researchers are trying to increase the amount of oil that can be extracted
from algae, which can then be converted into biofuels (see Demirbas and
Demirbas, 2010). Another important biofuels project was established by
the Aquaculture Research Centre (ARC) in the Arab Academy for Science,
Technology and Maritime Transport. The ARC managed to create algae powder
on a small scale, using dehydration techniques. More importantly, the ARC
successfully extracted biofuels from used cooking oil. After applying chemical
conversion techniques, the ARC obtained biodiesel from the used cooking oil in
a cost-effective manner with minimal environmental impact. For this purpose,
the ARC signed agreements with hotels and restaurants to obtain used cooking
3 Patent No. 24507/2009, granted by the Egyptian Patent Office, for “a method and multipurpose
apparatus for lignocelluloses materials pre-treatment to enhance subsequent enzymatic
hydrolysis for producing fermentable sugars and ethanol”.
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