東京大学大学院法学政治学研究科・法学部 グローバル・リーダーシップ寄付講座（読売新聞社）
連続公開セミナー 第３回
連続公開セミナー（第３回）
「サハラ以南における貧困削減‐ミレニアム・ビレッジ・プロジェクトの成果‐《
“Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons Learned in the Millennium Village Projects”
Prof. Kitaoka:
Thank you very much, Jeff, and now it’s turn for Dr. Hirano.
Dr. Hirano:
Frankly speaking I’m a little bit nervous, because from now I’m going to improvise comments to the world famous Mr. Development, but I`m trying to facilitate the understanding for the Japanese audience, especially to provide these differences between the African situation and Japanese historical experience. In my understanding, Millennium Villages program, which was created by Professor Sachs, is a very comprehensive concept development program and based on and also centered on agricultural productivity increase, because 80% of the extreme poverty population lives in the villages, and rural areas in Africa.
In our historical experience, the high economic growth period which ignited the late stage of 1950s industrial development always gets a notice, but one of the very important features is agricultural product increase. Because at the moment after the Second World War, we firstly were able to enjoy the food sufficiency in the 1960s, for example rice productivity doubled from the 1950s to the 1960s. That is a very big contribution for the population movement from the rural areas to the industrial areas and helped to keep a relatively low wage level for the Japanese industrial development. And from such kind of activity initiated by our government, we have the two agents. One was Agricultural Extension Service and the second one is the Livelihood Improvement Extension Service. So from that, established in our society itself, we know well the importance of the comprehensive scheme for poverty alleviation to be established with food sufficiency. During those years, almost 60% of the industrial expenditure of the general account of our government was for the poor and villagers. So the same kind of idea we can easily share in the case of African Development co-operation. And that kind of historical experience also prevailed in our neighboring Asian countries as the Green Revolution.
The second point is our relationship, especially the current relationship with Africa, especially Sub Saharan Africa. In the world, our country is the world’s biggest crop importer, cereal importer. By average 26 million tonnages of cereals was imported to our country. That’s almost the same amount of cereals imported by Sub Saharan Africa too. And for the whole African continent including the North African part, 55 million tonnage was imported annually. But 60% of the labor force in Africa is engaged in agriculture. Such kind of a situation is, if left untouched, we cannot expect poverty alleviation. Let me repeat this – 80% in the extreme poverty population lives in the rural areas. So productivity increase is definitely needed for African people to be emancipated from the extreme poverty. But also our volume of the cereal importation is very stabilized and going to decrease. It’s not because of our agricultural productivity expansion – it’s the stop of our population increase. But in the case of Africa, their volume of cereal importation is still growing very rapidly. So if in the future the world cereal market might collapse, maybe that feature comes from Africa. So it’s not only a matter for the African people. It’s a global matter, and also our matter, because Japan is much dependent on world provision of cereal production.
As the second point, the current relationship with Africa for Japan is going to be centered on natural resources. Now sometimes we compete with our neighboring China - our private sector is going to rush to get the necessary natural resources from Africa. And it’s not only for Africa. East Asian economy definitely needs Africa as a second resource supplier after China, Australia, Canada, and South America. So we definitely need a very stable and poverty free Africa society. I can say the most myopic need for Japan to see Africa is a stable resource supplier. But resource-oriented development was discussed in the economic circle – it’s not necessarily help for development itself. Sometimes it’s very against development. We call that phenomena as the “Resource Curse”.
So if let me allow two questions to Prof. Sachs, I would like to see his comments about natural resource-oriented development in Africa and also poverty alleviation development, because income distribution currently in Africa is quite unequal. Africans suffer not only poverty but very extreme inequality. Prof. Sachs is also expert on Russia and he mentions about Oligarchs, namely new riches, but the same things happen in Africa. The 25% of financial contribution was expected from locally in the Millennium Villages, so the local financial mobilization is quite important. The inequality tendency is sometimes quite against such kind of mobilization. Poverty alleviation is not just charity it’s not just voluntary wishes for our developed countries. It’s a matter of the philosophy because basic human rights have been severely threatened in some parts of the world especially in Sub Saharan Africa. So this is a matter of the philosophy in myself and it is a matter whether human being to be better beings or not. Thank you very much.
Prof. Kitaoka：
Jeff to respond to some of the points made, and then we will go to the floor.
Prof. Sachs：
Let me talk about the pathways for development in Africa, briefly, both the natural resources and agricultural potential and then about the inequalities. The good news on the agricultural front, as Prof. Hirano said: Africa is a major importer of grain now. And Africa imports recently I think about 35 million metrics tons of grain in 2007 and then prices went up tremendously in 2008 in the financial crisis and this has led to a major increase of hunger. Africa is farming around 100 million hectares right now in grain production approximately, and the yield that it’s getting is around one ton of grain per hectare. Most of the production is maize or some dry-land grain like millet and sorghum, there’s not very much wheat as that is a colder, temperate climate crop and there is some rice. On average it is one tone per hectare. In our countries, I don’t know what it is in Japan offhand, but it’s probably 5 or 7 tons per hectare…. It’s 7?. 7 tons per hector. And on average in developing countries it’s typical that it would be 3 tons per hectare or more, so Africa`s productivity is one third of the developing countries.
Now Prof. Hirano has been part of a very important project called the Sasagawa Global 2000 Project which was led by Dr. Norman Borlaug who recently passed away, and was the Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work in the Green Revolution of Asia, and the idea was to bring the Green Revolution to Africa which is a very good idea. In our MVs we have seen that if we enable our farmers to get fertilizer and high yield seeds varieties, their yields pretty quickly go from 1 ton up to 3 tons or even 4 tons per hectare, and some of our agronomists think we can reach 5-10 tons per hectare or at least 2 growing seasons if there`s some irrigation as well. So what does this suggest? It suggests that if Africa were enabled throughout the whole continent to have reached 2 tons per hectare, it would be an increase of 100 million tons of grain, which is almost 3 times what Africa is importing right now. The conclusion I think is correct that Africa could become self sufficient in food pretty quickly, and I think this would be a major step forward for Africa`s economic development, so that’s the first conclusion.
Second is about natural resources. Prof Hirano said and I`ve written some papers on this also trying to understand it. Having natural resource wealth in the mining sector whether it’s oil or gas or coal, or in the other mineral sectors like copper or iron ore or in the precious metals, like precious gems, and so forth, like diamonds or gold for that matter has had a mixed blessing in economic development. Sometimes it`s been well used, and you take the earnings from the natural resources and invest them in education, in physical infrastructure, and they become the leading edge of development but very often the natural resources have been a curse rather than a blessing, and one of the reasons is its easy for governments to grab the proceeds from the natural resources and use them corruptly rather than to invest them. These are not incomes that are enjoyed in a widespread way they are held by the government and if the government is corrupt, then it can just grab the proceeds. And this kind of resource base gives rise to corruption as well because it’s a big temptation and if you have an honest government it’s easy to overthrow that government often to get the rent, in other words the income stream from the natural resources. There are a couple of countries that have used the natural resources relatively well and Botswana is a famous case - its diamond earnings have been relatively well managed over time. But there have been many other countries that have used the natural resource wealth very badly, and Nigeria is probably the most famous example of that, because most of the oil wealth was stolen, by the way not just by Nigerians but also by western companies, like the former vice president of the US – not him necessarily but his company. Halliburton was found guilty of a major corruption scandal in Nigeria and this is not unusual because our big oil companies internationally play by the oil rules which are not necessarily the rules of the rest of society.
So this has been a source of problem, that the corruption is not only internal, but is also brought in from outside. And this means that in order to use natural resource wealth my conclusion is of course that it is potentially a benefit for an economy, but it can be a curse, and in order for it not to be a curse you need an institutional and legal framework to protect the society to make this quite transparent. And this needs transparency both on the international multi-national company side as well as on the internal use side and we need to add extra effort for the proper and honest management of the natural resource wealth and then it could be possible to turn it into effective development.
As for the inequality, there are many reasons for this and one is the huge gap between the urban and the impoverished rural areas and so some of the things happening in the Millennium Villages would reduce inequality, especially by raising the incomes of the farmers. But the longer term way to achieve reduced inequality certainly is through education because that is potentially the greatest equalizer of economic opportunity, is widespread access to education. That is Millennium Development Goal 2 – universal access to education. Again it’s not hard to achieve if there’s adequate financial resources but so far the rich countries have not invested as much they promised to, in the education in the poorer countries and its one area on which we should put much higher priority.