Brazil's president on Monday urged African countries to embrace biofuels as way of gaining economic independence during his first stop on an Africa tour to promote trade with the continent."At an hour when Africa is taking up the path of growth again, ethanol and biodiesel provide a way to guarantee the continent's energy autonomy and economic sovereignty," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told reporters in Burkina Faso after meeting with leaders of the West African country.
Silva announced that Brazil, the world leader in ethanol derived from sugarcane, has agreed to help West Africa's regional economic organization develop ethanol programs.
Baba Seid Bally, president of the African Association for the Promotion of Biofuel, said that the amount of money involved had yet to be negotiated.
In Mali, a public-private consortium of Brazilian and U.S. organizations has invested US$500 million in the development of jatropha, a plant used to make biodiesel fuel, Bally said. Brazil has also started working with African crop scientists in Ghana on biofuel initiatives.
Though African countries such as Nigeria and Angola boast large oil deposits, resource-poor nations like Burkina Faso have seen their economies suffer as oil have prices spiked in recent years. Senegal's president is working to promote an association of non-oil-producing states in Africa to urge a type of collective price bargaining.
Silva also signed several agreements to assist Burkina Faso in its push to lower child mortality, and to develop agriculture _ in particular cotton and soy production. Further details on the deals were not supplied.
This is Silva's seventh trip to Africa, but his first time in Burkina Faso. He was scheduled to continue on to Republic of Congo on Monday, followed by visits to South Africa and Angola.
In South Africa, he will meet with representatives from India and South Africa to discuss issues before the World Trade Organization. The three nations have repeatedly called for the United States and other industrialized countries to cut farm subsidies. Washington has said a liberalization pact is in peril because developing countries are refusing to open up their manufacturing markets.
In Burkina Faso, Silva also repeated a call for the reform of the U.N. Security Council to include more developing countries.
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