Abstract
Southern Africa is faced with the complex challenge of achieving sustainable economic development and food and energy security while protecting the environment. The region is currently experiencing an energy crisis, a result in part because of global increases in crude oil prices and limited generating capacity in some countries. We examined the potential of biofuels to address the aforesaid problems and their role in the agroecological and socioeconomic systems in the region, highlighting the challenges to be overcome before biofuels can become an integral part of the regional socioeconomic dynamics. Major hurdles to biofuels establishment include relatively poor awareness of the potential and opportunities presented by biofuels, technology challenges, food insecurity vulnerability associated with the use of grains such as maize as feedstocks, potential conflict in resource allocation between food and fuel crops, and good governance and its impact on stability of food supply. Resource allocation and the balance between the need for food security and fuel is discussed in the context of selection of a crop matrix that does not compromise food security or limit development of the biofuels sector. While the use of maize for ethanol might enhance producer prices, it may contribute to high food inflation and political unrest. Sweet sorghum on the other hand, presents an opportunity to provide food and bioethanol without compromising food security. Biofuels have great potential in southern Africa, but there is a need to establish and nurture the development of capacity, in the value chain from production to consumption, to realise the benefits of biofuels in the region.
Highlights
The developing world faces huge challenges in achieving basic food security and economic development in the face of soaring crude oil prices
The population of the African continent is expected to reach 1.3 billion by 2020 and 17% of these people will reside in southern Africa.[4]
Agriculture and mining sectors contribute the largest share to the African economy, employing more than two thirds of the working class
Summary
Liquid or solid fuels rendered from raw biological materials (plants, sewage, dry matter, cane sugar or wood pulp). Those developed by ‘conventional technology’ are commonly known as first generation biofuels and include vegetable oil, bioethanol, biodiesel and butanol, among others (Table 1). While major milestones have been made in transport fuel production from fermentation technologies that utilise sugarcane and corn in Brazil and the U.S.A., respectively, in other parts of the world commercialisation of bio-based materials is developing at a very slow pace. Southern Africa, and South Africa in particular, is suffering from the worst energy crisis in its history owing to the escalating global oil prices, poor planning on infrastructure development and production constraints. Some obvious differences in this regard prohibit a ‘one-blanket-fits-all’ inference as far as energy is concerned, and such differences will be highlighted
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