アフリカにおける食料問題と政府の役割

―マルサス的危機克服のために―

抄録

The global community today should ask “Who feed Sub-Saharan Africa, which is faced with the contemporary Malthusian crisis?” rather than “Who feed China?” Aside from remarkable increase in productivity of cereals in the rest of the world, Africa's cereal productivity has stayed very low, especially since the mid-1980s. This stagnation has led to imbalance between supply and demand of cereals, which may increasingly place heavy pressure on international cereal markets. Statistical analyses suggest that direct causes for low land productivity of cereals in Africa are meager volume of inputs such as fertilizer and underdevelopment of agricultural infrastructure including irrigation facility. Fertilizer input and irrigation development are significantly low in Africa. A more important issue is why Africa is particularly faced with such serious shortcomings in relation to these variables. It is demonstrated that low level of input of fertilizer is significantly correlated with low-level of education (adult literacy rate) and extent of marketization of food production. Underdevelopment of irrigation system can be explained by Africa's rather unique historical background where farmers have avoided intensive and costly utilization of land. Due to this background, collaborative activities essential for irrigated production is rather new for African farmers. Irrigation construction and management are very difficult as it should mobilize farmers' commitment in long-term collective outcomes while suppressing their short-term free-riding activities. To overcome these problems, human development centered on education is to be linked with, rather than differentiated from, agricultural development and fostering of markets. Education is to be reoriented so that productive collective capacity as well as individual personal capacity could be reinforced for the purpose of building and managing collective infrastructure.