The government of Swaziland is allocating thousands of hectares of land in drought-affected Lavumisa to USA Distilleries, a private company, for a US$5 million project to draw biofuel from cassava, despite facing widespread hunger and water shortage, according to media reports.
Swaziland is among a number of African counties drawn into the biofuel rush as high oil prices drive up the profits of the alternative fuel. The project has, however, rekindled a debate on how the government should use its arable lands in a country where about 40 per cent of the people suffer from acute food and water shortages.
Defending the government's stance, Sipho Mthetfwa, an agriculture extension officer in Shiselweni Region, said the government needs to develop industry and new markets so people can collect wages and buy food, given that agriculture could not be depended upon to resolve the country's economic woes. He said in Lavumisa, an area hit by a long drought for the last 15 years, small landholder farmers are too poor to buy inputs for irrigation. The local farmers are only willing to grow maize, which has not grown well in years.
Cassava, on the other hand, is drought-tolerant and productive in poor soils. Between 1961 and 1995, cassava production for human consumption rose by 50 per cent in Africa and 70 per cent in Asia, the leading producer of cassava-derived starches, which are now being fermented to produce biofuel, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Florence Dube, a food aid worker in Manzini, the area's main commercial town, however, questioned the choice of cassava over other food crops. "There is a need for food today. Food prices are so high that this is an investment as worthy as ethanol. If the fields of Lavumisa can be irrigated to grow cassava, they can be irrigated to grow food for people," she said.
Mfomfo Nkhambule, a member of parliament who has been critical of government attempts to cultivate sugar cane rather than staple foods, raised his concerns in parliament, but few other politicians have commented on the food crisis. "As long as the WFP (World Food Programme) and others are providing food, there seems a lack of urgency," a local newspaper columnist commented.
Mthetfwa said the cassava ethanol project illustrated a similar skewing of priorities. "We cannot depend on food aid to come to us indefinitely ... from what I hear, the donors are wondering why we are not doing more for ourselves with the resources we have."
Treasure Maphanga, the director of the Esicojeni Foundation, a child hunger alleviation program, "I am angry at the fact that, with all the human and natural resources, this country still depends on food handouts. We have an opportunity to correct the situation by the involvement of all people in the fight against the dependency syndrome."
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