Zimbabwe’s biodiesel strategy: Mugabe triumph or tragicomedy?

In Zimbabwe, the Minister of Science and Technology Development, Dr Olivia Muchena, targeted up to 1 percent of the fiscal 2008 National Budget for research, development and biotechnology projects. The minister spoke at the opening of the Mt. Hampden biodiesel plant. Zimbabwe’s government has been seeking new sources of finance to help with plant operations.

Zim-skeptics have pointed out certain flaws in the Zimbabwe biodiesel plan, including its dependence on jatropha feedstocks before the first jatropha harvest. A Biofuels Digest reader writes in Zim Review:

I’m being even more long-winded than usual, but you can see where I’m going with this. While I would very much like to see Zimbabwe making serious headway with biofuels, I am “reserving” judgment on what is being painted as a brilliant triumph by the Reserve Bank long before we have any serious jatropha harvests! Actually, the prematurely high projected yields for a process that would take years of experimentation to get right even if these were normal times in Zimbabwe, and the secrecy about so many other basic details to do with this factory make me doubt what exactly the “launch” signified, if anything at all.

Does “launch” here biodiesel is now being regularly produced, or does it mean something much less?

I have many other questions, but already I am inclined to believe the “launch” was more publicity stunt than anything concrete.

After the recent embarrassment of being conned by some crooked smooth operator who convinced them diesel could be squeezed out of a rock, I wonder if Mugabe & Co. have not fallen for yet another fuel scam.

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