Luanda, Oct 27 - Brazilian industrial giant Odebrecht will start producing sugar and ethanol in Angola next year in a bid to revive the African nation's once-prosperous farming sector, devastated by three decades of civil war.
Odebrecht said it had partnered with Angolan state-owned oil firm Sonangol and private company Damer in a joint venture, Biocom, to invest $220 million in a project it hopes will help steer Angola away from its oil dependence.
The African nation rivals Nigeria as the continent's biggest oil producer and is dependent on oil for almost 90 percent of its income. The project will be the first major investment in sugar and ethanol production in Angola in decades.
"We will start production in 2010 and reach cruise speed by 2013," said Humberto Rangel, director of communications at Odebrecht Angola.
The joint venture will farm sugarcane on 30,000 hectares of land in the Malange province, about 400 kilometres east of the capital Luanda. A processing plant will produce 260,000 tonnes of sugar and 30 million litres of ethanol per year.
The fibrous parts of the sugarcane and the heat from the machineries will also be used to produce 47 megawatts of electricity, Rangel added.
Angola was a top coffee, banana and sugarcane exporter before a 27-year civil war after independence from Portugal in 1975 led to a mass exodus of farmers to the cities.
The country now relies on imported food to satisfy most of its needs, which has helped bolster inflation to close to 14 percent and also contributes to making Luanda one of the world's most expensive cities for foreigners.
Angola is the latest African country that has granted land to companies for non-food crops, a trend that has raised fears in rural communities all the way up to the United Nations.
The United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization warned recently that the private and foreign ownership of African farmland could threaten access to food, water and other resources. Angola has no law for regulating biofuels production.
Odebrecht holds a 40 percent stake in the Biocom joint-venture. It is also building highways, hotels and dams in Angola and holds a stake in the country's offshore oil Block 16.