Study raises concerns about sugarcane plantation of Addax Bioenergy in Sierra Leone

A study about a land lease agreement between the Swiss company Addax Bioenergy and communities in Sierra Leone has raised  concerns related to food security, access to water, and lifelihoods of the affected communities and farmers. The study had been commissioned by the Swiss Bread for all and by two German development organizations, Bread for the World and Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED).

The report was published on 15 June by the Sierra Leone Network the Right to Food (SiLNoRF). At a press conference in Freetown (Sierra Leone) the two researchers from Ghana who conducted the research, Mike Anane and Cosmos Abiwu, presented the results of the study.

The researchers found that "many farmers in project affected communities have already lost their access to fertile lands; though Addax has provided community members with alternative farm lands and confined them to smaller lands, promises by Addax to plough and harrow the lands materialized too late in 2010. This led to very low yield on these fields and local communities reported to now face growing food insecurity and hunger."

Furthermore, the researchers observed that "water has become an ever increasing problem for the communities as lands leased by Addax are currently being prepared and even at this initial stage some water bodies such as the ‘Kirbent‘ and ‘Domkoni‘ streams near the Maronko village in the Makari Gbanti Chiefdom have ceased to exist.”

Download the executive summary and the full report at www.brotfueralle.ch/en/english.