Cameroon: Investors Seek to Boost Biofuel Production
by Elias Ntungwe Ngalame (AllAfrica) Biofuel production initiatives are gaining ground in Cameroon as the government seeks to reduce the Central African country’s energy deficit while fighting climate change.
Although biofuel production has not yet reached a large scale, the government is optimistic about the prospect of boosting the economy through a new source of much-needed renewable energy to complement hydroelectric power generation.
…Billionaire Vincent Bollore, head of the French-owned Bollore Group, recently met Biya and the minister of water and energy, Basil Atagana Kouna, to discuss large-scale biofuel production. A subsidiary of the company, SOCAPALM, has been active in Cameroon for the past 30 years. Together with two other subsidiaries, SAFACAM and Ferme Suisse, it established a pilot biofuels programme in 2005.
The Bollore Group controls more than 80 percent of palm-oil production in Cameroon, mostly for export, and now plans to boost its production of biofuels significantly beyond the current rate of 100,000 litres per annum, although targets have not yet been announced.
“We have come to discuss with the president of Cameroon and other government officials our project to go into large-scale biofuel production, as well as opening a photovoltaic or solar energy firm that will go a long way to making up the energy deficit in Cameroon and help in the fight against climate change,” Bollore told a press conference.
…French bio-energy company Agro Energy Development (AED) has been in discussion with local authorities for the past two years about the possibility of developing biofuel from jatropha in the north of the country, where the plant flourishes. READ MORE
