Given the increasing global demand for food, feed, industrial raw material and energy crops, BiomassWeb aims at contributing to food security in Sub-Saharan Africa through harnessing productivity and efficiency gains in the whole biomass-producing, processing and trading system. This will be achieved by an increased integration of all value web components and the cascading utilization of biomass.
Biomass as a renewable resource is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future economies of most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The expected trends of rising demand for more diverse biomass-based produce from agricultural land will transform the traditional agriculture from a food-supplying to a biomass-supplying sector. Many African countries have the potential to not only meet their own future demand for biomass-based produce but also to provide other African and industrial countries with raw materials and, most importantly, processed biomass products. But the actual available biomass is underutilized in sub-Saharan Africa. Concepts to increase food security while attending growing demands for non-food biomass and developing alternative biomass sources are still in their infant stages. These gaps will be addressed by the BiomassWeb project.
Main Funding Partners: BiomassWeb is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supported with funds from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development as part of the GlobE – Research for the global food supply program.