Swedish public costs for failed SEKAB/EcoEnergy more than 200 million SEK

Norwegian based journal Development Today is always well informed about news on Nordic devlopment projects. Two articles in today's issue deal with the failed SEKAB/EcoEnergy sugar plantation in Bagamoyo (see my previous posts on this blog Green economy  and Swedish agrobusiness abroad fails)

From the article IFAD days away from cancellling Bagamoyo sugar loan we learn that Tanzanian government must confirm the status of the Bagamoyo sugar and ethanol project to IFAD before the end of this month. IFAD (The International Fund for Agricultural Development - an agency of the UN) has guaranteed huge loans and grants for the development of outgrower schemes in Bagamoyo together with the African Development Bank.

From the article SEKAB never recovered losses from Bagamoyo we learn that the losses of SEKAB when they sold their Africa-based companies to Per Carstedt for 400 SEK were written off early. The chances of getting small pieces of that back through buying cheap ethanol from Bagamoyo according to the agreement from 2011 now seems to have disappeared into thin air.

So it is now possible to start looking at the losses of public Swedish money..

SEKAB is a public-owned energy company where municipalities (local districts)  in the north of Sweden have put in money for the Africa plans. According Swedish television investigative program Uppdrag granskning 500 million SEK disappeared from taxpayers money into the SEKAB Africa companies. This and other problems with their energy company took a heavy toll on the economy of Örnsköldsvik town according Uppdrag granskning in August 2014 .

According to Development Today the losses from SEKAB when selling the company to EcoEnergy were 158 million SEK that were written off  long time ago.

On top of that Swedish International Development Agency Sida, has a claim of SEK 54 millions on EcoEnergy, according to Development Today.

It seems safe to say that losses of Swedish taxpayers for this land grabbing adventure amounts to much more than 200 million SEK.

Green economy, Scandinavian investments and agricultural modernization in Tanzania

New publication in Journal of Peasant Studies

Here a qoute from the NORAGRIC website:

Abstract: ‘Green economy’ is a broad concept open to different interpretations, definitions and practices ranging from the greening of current neoliberal economies to radical transformations of these economies. In Africa, one emerging and powerful idea in the implementation of the green economy seems to be to use a green agenda to further strengthen development as modernization through capital-intensive land investments. This has again reinvigorated old debates about large-scale versus smallholder agriculture. Influential actors justify large-scale ‘green’ investments by the urgency for economic development as well as to offset carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. In this contribution, we discuss the case of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) to give examples of how the green economy may materialize in Africa. SAGCOT is presented by the Tanzanian government as well as investors and donors as a leading African example of an ‘investment blueprint’ and as a laboratory to test green growth combining profitable farming with the safeguard of ecosystem services. In particular, we discuss three Scandinavian investments within SAGCOT, their social implications and their discursive representations through the public debates that these investments have generated in Scandinavia.

Keywords: green economy, agricultural modernization, Scandinavian investments, SAGCOT, Tanzania

Read the article

Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania

Foto

Sagcot.com

Mikael Bergius is a PhD Fellow at Noragric focusing on agricultural development and food sovereignty in Africa (specifically Tanzania).  His doctoral project is: ‘Turning Towards a Corporate Food Regime in Tanzania –  Drivers, Impacts, and Responses’.


Tor Arve Benjaminsen is a Professor at Noragric. His main areas of interest are land tenure; environmental narratives; political ecology and environmental history.

Mats Widgren is a Professor Emeritus in geography, especially human geography, at the University of Stockholm.