8 April 2011
“I lost my land. They did not respect me. They betrayed me.”
Kwame is a father of six from a village in Senegal. He used to have a six-hectare plot of land where he grew millet, groundnuts and beans. A European biofuel company came to his village and promised everyone that if they gave up their land they would all get well-paid jobs on the company’s biofuel plantation.
Like many of his fellow villagers, Kwame gave up his land and began working for the company. But after just two months they began to reduce his monthly salary. Soon, his salary was half of what he had been promised and was too little for him to be able to support his family.
Not long after, the company fired Kwame and everyone else from his village and brought in workers from elsewhere.