THE biofuel bandwagon rolled into Africa this week, as Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrived to promote ethanol and biodiesel production. Brazil, which now meets 30 per cent of its demand for automobile fuel with ethanol derived from sugar cane, wants the developing world to follow suit.
Speaking in Burkina Faso, Lula said that biofuels could provide a way to secure Africa’s energy needs and economic stability, but Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, a UK-based conservation agency, says that large-scale ethanol production in Africa is a mistake. For one thing, he says, it is not…
