Agricultural investment and rural transformation: a case study of the Makeni bioenergy project in Sierra Leone

The report evaluates the Makeni Project, a 400 million EUR sugarcane bioethanol investment by Addax Bioenergy Sierra Leone (ABSL). While the project has introduced infrastructure, formal wage labour, and high-productivity rice cultivation through its Farmer Development Programme, it has also created challenges including labour scarcity during growing seasons, price inflation, and increased competition for water and food. The study concludes that while FDI can provide significant capital and technology, it cannot replace the public sector, and the transformative potential of such investments is diminished without supporting government investment and strong governance.

• The Makeni Project is the largest agricultural investment in Sierra Leone, consisting of a 10,000 ha sugarcane estate and a distillery designed to produce 85,000 m3 of ethanol annually for the EU, as well as 15 MW of electricity for the national grid.
• ABSL implemented a Farmer Development Programme (FDP) to mitigate crop losses from land concessions by establishing community fields for rice production and providing inputs and preparation services.
• The project has significantly altered local infrastructure and demographics, including the construction of approximately 440 km of roads by June 2014 and an influx of migrants seeking employment, which has led to price inflation and competition for resources.
• While the project created 3,455 jobs by December 2014, employment is heavily skewed toward men (90%) and often seasonal, which may conflict with traditional rice planting and harvesting cycles.
• Field research revealed extreme poverty in the project area, with 62% of households likely living on less than 0.50 USD per day and 90% relying on rainfed subsistence agriculture.
• The report argues that private FDI cannot substitute for the public sector; for instance, the government failed to build small road links (as short as 50 metres) that would have connected villages to the roads built by ABSL.
• The project's long-term sustainability is threatened by a lack of local skills and the failure to implement a planned outgrower scheme due to logistical challenges.

APA

Fielding, M., Davis, M., Weitz, N., Cummings-John, I., Hickey, A., Johnson, F. X., Senyagwa, J., Martinez, L., & Sun, M. (2015). Agricultural investment and rural transformation: a case study of the Makeni bioenergy project in Sierra Leone. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-PR-2015-09-Makeni-Project-ES.pdf

Chicago

Fielding, Matthew, Marion Davis, Nina Weitz, Ival Cummings-John, Amanda Hickey, Francis X. Johnson, Jacqueline Senyagwa, Lidia Martinez, and Miaojie Sun. Agricultural investment and rural transformation: a case study of the Makeni bioenergy project in Sierra Leone. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2015. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-PR-2015-09-Makeni-Project-ES.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{fielding2015agricultural, author = {Fielding, Matthew and Davis, Marion and Weitz, Nina and Cummings-John, Ival and Hickey, Amanda and Johnson, Francis X. and Senyagwa, Jacqueline and Martinez, Lidia and Sun, Miaojie}, title = {{Agricultural investment and rural transformation: a case study of the Makeni bioenergy project in Sierra Leone}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2015}, month = aug, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-PR-2015-09-Makeni-Project-ES.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }