Weed's biofuel potential sparks African land grab

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ACCRA, Ghana - Jatropha, a scruffy bush producing dry, black nuts, is triggering a scramble for land in Africa, with Norwegian, Indian and British companies looking to producing clean-burning biodiesel for cars and trucks.

It's not much in the looks department, but jatropha has a big advantage over alternatives. The nuts can't be eaten because they are poisonous.

Long used as nothing more than living fences meant to hold back the encroaching Sahara and Kalahari deserts, jatropha oil, the evidence shows, burns cleaner than fossil fuels.

That, in turn, has experimental plantations popping up in Africa from Kenya to Ghana to South Africa.

"You can't keep from winning on this one," said Jack Holden, director of GoldStar Biodiesel, a self-described "serial entrepreneur." He is one of a small number of businessmen, based in Ghana, who hope to profit from jatropha by helping investors find places for their money.

As a natural defense against erosion and desertification, jatropha already is a darling of the development world. Plant it once and it will grow for 50 years, even in some of the poorest soil conditions on the planet.

When drought descends, jatropha bushes keep producing.

Thousands of rural African women's groups have been trained to hand crush the seeds, turning the resulting oil into soap and the organic waste into fertilizer cakes.

But the oil inside its seed also burns with one-fifth the emissions of conventional fuel.

With the growing attention of major oil distributors, jatropha is the little plant that could lift African farmers from lives of poverty and the continent into a fuel oil producer.