With financial support from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Sweden and the German Development Institute /Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD) at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in collaboration with the Department of Energy Affairs in the Ministry of Energy and Mining organized a day-long “National Seminar on Transitions from Traditional Biomass to Modern Bioenergy” at the Sunbird Capital Hotel in Lilongwe. It brought together representatives of stakeholders from government, the private sector, civil society organizations and the academia. The seminar aimed at sharing views about the past experiences, opportunities and challenges of bioenergy development in Malawi, in the complex field between agriculture, energy, forestry, food security and economic development. Apart from scientific papers presented at the Seminar there was an exhibition of bioenergy technologies that have been developed by local scientists, companies and non-governmental organisations.

The Seminar took place at a time that Malawi is facing challenges of unstable supply of imported fossil fuels. In 2011, the country was almost paralysed by lack of fuels for vehicles which caused heavy economic losses and contributed to weaken the confidence in the government. The main reason is lack of foreign currency receipts due to fading export earnings from tobacco, the country’s main export product, while at the same time the demand for imported goods including vehicles and fuel is increasing.

Biofuel production is seen as a promising way for substituting a considerable amount of fossil fuel use for transport, industry, light and electricity. The country has a strong track record of producing bioethanol from molasse, a by-product of sugar production in which Malawi is highly competitive. Since the 1980s, two factories have produced enough bioethanol to blend between 10 and 20% of the countries petrol consumption. Since some years, private companies have promoted the production of Jatropha in smallholder hedgerows for vegetable oil production. In September 2012 a new factory was inaugurated that is expected to produce bio-diesel for the national market. These local sources to replace fossil fuel are of significant importance for the country since alternative sources of foreign currency are not visible for the time being. The government has ambitious plans for increasing both types of biofuel.

More fundamental, the expansion of agricultural area and the unsustainable use of traditional biomass without reforestation reduces and degrades forests, natural vegetation and soil cover and increases soil degradation and erosion. In addition, traditional bioenergy use causes serious health problems and is energetically inefficient. In fact, as in most other poor countries of Sub-Sahara Africa, access to modern energy services for households in Malawi is extremely low—less than 10% overall and less than 1% in rural areas. In 2008, private households consumed 83% of the total energy in the country, of which 985 biomass. Since biomass also is also an important energy source in industry (55%), the total contribution of biomass amounts to an overwhelming 89% of total energy consumption. Thus, a more sustainable production of biomass and a more efficient use are key to more sustainable energy consumption for a very long time to come. The most prominent efforts are the introduction of improved stoves, and the improvement of forestry and forest management systems.

There are, however, many open questions with regard to the social, economic, environmental and political sustainability of the different measures. These concern in particular the governance of common pool resources such as forests and community lands; the acceptance of stoves which have to respond to many, often conflicting requirements of various populations; the expansion of sugar cane area for which at least partially land has to be acquired at large scale to attract investors, with all the concomitant problems; the organisation of linkages between smallholders as outgrowers of biofuel feedstock and large processing industries, and of managing the subsectors between the poles of competition and coordination; and the key concern of the trade-offs between food and fuel. For all these challenges, there is still an ample need for improvements in information, technologies, finance, standards, policies and policy coherence, and capacities for implementation. The Seminar searched to contribute to some of these challenges.

The scientific contribution of DIE, represented by Michael Brüntrup, to the Seminar was the presentation of preliminary results of the research of Raoul Herrmann on the impacts of sugarcane production for sugar and bioethanol on local (rural) development. He conducted stratified surveys with several hundreds of workers, smallholder outgrower farmers and various types of control group farmers. The analyses show that the high commercial value of sugar and ethanol has facilitated considerable socio- economic welfare for both sugarcane outgrower farmers and estate workers..

For further information please contact Michael Brüntrup or Raoul Herrmann