Biofuels Investment and Community Land Tenure in Tanzania

 One of the most wellknown biofuel investments was that of Bioshape, which acquired approximately 34,000 ha in Kilwa District for the cultivation of jatropha.

 By 2009, Bioshape was bankrupt and had withdrawn from Kilwa, only ever cultivating a small area of jatropha trial plots and engaging in some timber harvesting from their much larger plot of land. The land they acquired was, according to formal procedures under the Village Land Act, transferred from village land to general land in order to grant the land lease to the investor, Bioshape. Bioshape’s demise, like that of a number of other highprofile biofuels investments in Tanzania and throughout Africa, created uncertainty as to what would be the impacts on the local communities that had ceded their land, and in fact their perpetual customary rights to that land, to the company. This report examines what the impacts and implications are from the collapse of such large-scale land-based investments, and what lessons can in retrospect be derived from the experience of Bioshape in Kilwa. 

The report documents, insofar as is possible using available information, the process Bioshape and government authorities at national and district level undertook to acquire the land from the four villages in Kilwa where Bioshape established operations.