Stefan De Keijser

I am a soil chemist (Louvain, Belgium, `84) and I hold a post graduate in Business Management. I worked as a researcher, lecturer, laboratory manager and I held senior responsibilities in the Belgian development aid administration. I gained my experience in Belgium, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana, and visited most countries in Central and Southern Africa.

In 1993, when in Burundi, I created CALCOBU. This company was to exploit a quarry in Rutana, Burundi for the production of agricultural lime. Implementation of the project did not take place because of the civil war that broke out in that year.

As technical advisor for crop development at the Southern African Development Community (SADC), I was since 2002 involved in policy development on all hot issues of present day agriculture (agricultural trade, GMO, harmonisation of seed and pesticides regulations). I successfully defended the idea that access to new markets such as energy crops is key to the success of African agriculture, and hence to poverty alleviation and food security. I organised a high level SADC workshop on biofuels in October 2004 and coordinated the SADC feasibility study on biofuels in July 2005.

I developed the concept ‘Farming for Energy’, and concretised it into a business plan. Driven by the will to realise what had been developed and to pioneer in this new field, I created the company FELISA in April 2005.