Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
15 December 2007
Maputo
Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Friday laid the fist stone in the construction of what is planned as the largest ethanol plant in Africa.This project, known as PROCANA, involves planting 30,000 hectares of sugar cane in Massingir district in the southern province of Gaza. The cane is the raw material for the production of ethanol. When the factory is operational, it will process 9,000 tonnes of cane a day, to produce 480,000 litres of ethanol.

A further 1,500 hectares are reserved for local farmers, who will grow additional amounts of sugar cane and sell it to PROCANA.

The foreign investor is the London-based Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC), which has pledged a total investment of 510 million US dollars. The project will also generate electricity for local use, and create 7,000 jobs. This could lead to a significant increase in per capita income in Massingir.

The CAMEC financial director, Andrew Burns, cited in Saturday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, said that PROCANA will have a multiplier effect, benefiting the surrounding communities, and providing alternatives to the traditional emigration of workers to the South African mines.

A serious problem for this project is the availability of water. The sugar cane plantation will use water from the Massingir dam on the Elephants river, the major tributary of the Limpopo. Water used by Procana is water that does not go further down the Limpopo Valley to the irrigated rice and maize fields of Chokwe and Xai-Xai.

Farmers on the lower Limpopo have expressed concern that there will not be enough water both for Procana, and for their own needs. Calculations done by the farmers, and published in the weekly paper “Savana”, suggest that the vast majority of the Massingir dam’s available water will be used by Procana.

The government, however, believes that the farmers’ fears are unfounded, and that their figures are far too conservative. The government is confident that the Massingir dam will be able to provide water, not only for Procana, but for the entire irrigated perimeter of Chokwe, and the irrigation schemes in the Xai-Xai area, on the lower Limpopo.

But rainfall in southern Mozambique is unreliable, and Guebuza’s delegation was reminded of this later on Friday when the President inaugurated a new bridge over the Limpopo, linking the districts of Chokwe and Guija. Hardly any rain has fallen in recent weeks in Chokwe, although the rainy season was supposed to start in October.

As a result the Limpopo is virtually dry at Chokwe, with only a trickle of water flowing under the new bridge.

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Copyright © 2007 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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