Agricultural Reform in Africa-With Special Focus on Taiwan Assisted Rice Production in Africa, Past, Present and the Future Perspectives-

Abstract

Africa is the largest continent in the Southern Hemisphere. It has enormous ecological diversity, embracing two temperate zones, two subtropical zones and a tropical region. This geographical situation allows people in Africa to grow diversified crops. The 655 million Africans are largely agriculturally based. The main foods consist of the coarse grains (sorghum, millet, maize), wheat, rice, root and tuber crops (yam, cassava, sweet potato, potato, and taro); Asian rice is the preferred cereal and now replaces the indigenous African rice species. In order to solve the food problem of the increasing population, efforts have been made to increase rice production in most African countries. Republic of China on Taiwan has been one of the countries which extended technical assistance to Africa to help increase rice production. During the past 39 years, through the Committee of International Technical Cooperation and International Cooperation and Development Fund, Republic of China on Taiwan devoted a large number of Chinese specialists and technicians in oversea service across six geographical regions. Taiwan's agricultural cooperation projects in Africa began in 196L with agricultural technical mission sent to Liberia. In the following years, 23 missions were stationed in Africa, though some were withdrawn later. As of May 1., 2001, eight missions are still operating in African countries. During the past 39 years, the agricultural technical missions in Africa reclaimed a total of 28,631. hectares of rice fields in 24 African countries. They also built a total of 2,784 Km of irrigation canals and a total of 1,524 km of drainage canals, which enabled to irrigate a total of 18,244 hectares of rice fields in 24 countries. This infrastructure building in the past years played an important role to promote the ability ofrice production in the African countries. In this paper, a special focus is placed on the Taiwan assisted rice production in 13 African countries, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Benin, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger and Senegal. Taiwan model of rice production in Africa, with regards to the past achievements and difficulties encountered in technology transfer, and the perspectives of future cooperation in rice production between Republic of China on Taiwan and African countries are discussed.