ABSTRACT
Africa has sufficient land and water resources for grain production. If Africa’s agricultural potential could be fully developed, it would not only solve its own grain needs, but also help to meet demand in other regions (25th Africa District Meeting of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 2008a). Besides abundant land and water resources, 95 per cent of areas in Africa are located in tropical or subtropical climatic zones, providing a cumulatively good temperature (heat units) for the perennial growth of crops. In terms of basic agricultural production conditions, China as a whole is inferior to Africa. However, Africa remains at a lower level when it comes to land quality, water resource utilization efficiency and the resilience to recover from natural disasters, all of which are related to limited investment in agriculture over a long period and to low output efficiency compared to factor inputs (Eswaran et al., 1997). In Africa, relatively poor agricultural production conditions have restricted the development of agriculture. China, with a variety of types of land and seasons which are matched by a diversity of agricultural production modes and types and high market integration, possesses a great capacity for agricultural production and regulation of supply within the region. Meanwhile, with large differences in production between different countries in Africa and with regional cooperation organizations unable to coordinate discrepancies in production or encourage balanced trade between states, African countries find it hard to make an overall plan for regulating and utilizing internal production conditions, which ultimately restricts the improvement of resource utilization efficiency.
