When this Himbara will stop barking???
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On Tue, 2/14/17, Nzi Nink nzinink@yahoo.com [haguruka] <haguruka@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Subject: [haguruka.com] Rwanda: Kagame-Blair US$250 Million Phantom Project Is Dead & Buried.
To: "Nzinink" <nzinink@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 10:51 PM
https://medium.com/@david.himbara_27884/kagame-blair-us-250-million-phantom-project-is-dead-buried-3452e98ddad2#.pyu22rva5
David Himbara
Educator, writer, and professor of
international development based in Toronto, Canada.
Feb 13
Kagame-Blair US$250
Million Phantom Project Is Dead & Buried
File photo
It
was a dream project cementing Kagame-Blair partnership and
personal friendship. The deal was signed in Kigali in
November 2009 – with former British Prime Minister Tony
Blair personally witnessing the event. And it was, at the
the time, the biggest investment in Rwanda ever – US$250
million – to enable Rwanda to produce 20 million litres of
biofuel annually from jatropha plants. And two companies –
the UK-based Eco Positive Ltd and Eco-fuel Global LLC from
the United States – would make this happen. Blair had
brought his friend Kagame a game-changing investment.
Kagame and Blair were very happy. Why not? This
project aimed to achieve no less than six objectives:
Increased fuel security and reduced oil
imports;
Food security through production of
fertilizer as a by-product of the biofuel and increased
agricultural yields through intercropping;
Direct employment of 6,500 jobs;
Promote a more environmentally-friendly
transport;
Use marginal and unproductive
10,000 hectares not suitable for agriculture to grow
jatropha;
Turn Rwanda into the regional
powerhouse for biofuels.
This is how the
project was announced on November 23, 2009:
"Eco-Fuel Global this week entered a
groundbreaking agreement with the Government of Rwanda
estimated to be worth in excess of $250m; to produce
bio-fuels from Jatropha Curcas…The signing ceremony held
at the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) head office was
witnessed by the former British Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Tony
Blair, whose office supports this project."
Nicknamed Kagame's cheerleader-in-chief,
Blair became the champion of the US$250 million deal. Kagame
readily threw his fellow Rwandans under the bus – he
provided 10,000 hectares in a country where the population
density (people per sq. km of land area) is 471. That is how
Eco Positive (Rwanda) Ltd was born.
So what became of this mega US$250 million
investment? Where is Eco Positive Rwanda now, and where is
its biofuels? How much has the biofuel reduced oil imports
in Rwanda? And where are the 6,500 jobs?
Fast-forward to June 23, 2014 – this is the
date when the directors of Eco Positive Rwanda filed for
bankruptcy in the U.K. as shown in "Striking off
application by a company" attached here.
The company was dissolved
later in the year on October 28, 2014 as indicated by the
company registrar in the U.K.
We can't know for sure what happened between
2009 and 2014 when Eco Positive Rwanda collapsed. Rwanda
parliament is dead and therefore cannot hold Kagame
accountable. In this unpredictable environment, many
investors go to Rwanda believing that it is a good place to
invest. They get a nasty shock – some mysteriously lose
their businesses. Others are illegally seized. For greater
detail about the real investment climate in Rwanda see my
book, Kagame's Economic Mirage.
Somewhere
along the way, the whole thing fell apart. The Eco Positive
left, and Rwanda went on its own. The then Scientific and
Technological Research Institute (later changed to National
Industrial Research and Development Agency), continued with
the biofuel idea. Its own pilot plant for biofuel mass
production soon led to a diesel station project and a bus
run on clean energy – all of which came to a dead end.
The East African has recently brought us to
date, even though its account avoids talking about the
US$250 million Blair-Kagame phantom investment. The
newspaper restricts itself to the National Industrial
Research and Development Agency's biofuel pilot plant as
follows:
"Taxpayers are losing unknown
amounts of money in non-operational industrial equipment of
the biodiesel production project whose fate still hangs in
the balance four years later. More than $35 million was
initially invested in setting up the pilot plant for biofuel
mass production plant, a diesel station and a bus, but these
facilities have not been put to use in a long time…While
projections showed the country had potential to grow a
significant amount of bio-crops like Jatropha to sustain
production,…it was later discovered that the climate is
not suitable for the crops needed."
Can
you believe this? How is possible that, after all these
years, the Rwandan regime discovered that the country's
climate is not suitable for jatropha? Can Kagame explain
this loss of taxpayers' money running into millions of
dollars? Did Blair who championed the US$250 million phantom
investment acknowledge his role? Honestly, when will the
Rwandan nightmare under the rule of strongman Kagame end?
KagameEconomicsDictatorshipGovernmentLeadership
###
"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can
Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.
###
Posted by: Emmanuel Gasinzigwa <egasinzigwa@yahoo.fr>
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-Ce dont jai le plus peur, cest des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre.
- The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
- I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.
- The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
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