The Research Of Land Use And Agricultural Development In Africa

The Africa has abundant land resources, as the second biggest continent. But it is very disproportionate, after comparing its poor agriculture economy. According to the statistics of African land use from 1990 to 2005 in FAO data-base, land use present situations and their variation characteristics in these 15 years of Africa were analyzed by the Lorentz curves, the centralization indexes, the dynamic degree and the relative change rate. And according to agricultural statistics of Africa, the impact on African agriculture of land use and its potential to develop were analyzed. The primary results show as follows.(1) The gross of land resources is abundant, but the per capita area of land declines. The proportion of agricultural land is low in the structure of land use, especially the arable land resource is shortage. The population growth rate of Africa is 3.47%, it's much higher than its arable land growth rate, and more than 50%'s population is concentrated on agricultural field. So the stress of arable land is great from the quantity and quality. According to the land use types' centralization degree, the arable land is dispersed, and its centralization indexes is lower than the non-farming land and grass land's. According the structure of land use in each region, it has obvious regional differences in Africa. The Central Africa's forest area is biggest. The North Africa's non-farming land is more than other regions in Africa. The East Africa's land structure is relatively balanceable. The West Africa's arable land is most concentrated in Africa. The South Africa's grassland is most abundant in Africa.(2) The characteristic of land use in Africa from 1990 to 2005 showed that the variation range of land use was small in these 15 years, the speed is slow, and the structure was comparatively stable. But the speed of arable land and forest were relatively faster than the grass land and non-farming land. The land use variation of East Africa has more obvious differences than other regions. It shows that the former's various types of land use all change obviously, and the latter's various types of land use don't change very obviously except the arable land and forest. It fully indicates that the growth of population, land use, and human activities all give much pressure to the arable land in each regions of Africa. And the changing regional differences of the non-farming land may be influence by the regional differences of urbanization level and land desertification degree.(3) The research of the African agriculture's present status and problems shows that the African agriculture is very vulnerable. First, the growth of agriculture production value had depended on the quantity changing of arable land for a long time. The change trend of agriculture production value was same as the arable land change trend, when the society, politics, economy, finance and so on had been relatively steady from 2000 to 2005. Second, the African agriculture was easy to be influenced by environmental events such as natural disasters, international financial crisis, which could bring great change. For example, in the year of 1992, 1995,1997, the agriculture production value was declined, which had much relative with the turbulence of political situation in the Africa and the outbreak of international financial crisis. And in the year of 1991, 1996, 1998, the agriculture production value increased, which was much relative with the stimulation of African economic policy and the reconditioning of international economic. And the unsteady degree of African agriculture was much higher than the world's.(4) The field of agricultural technique and the resource of reserve arable land have much potential. It has great cooperation base and foreground between china and Africa in the fields of the investment in Africa, the technical training to agricultural labor, the communion and cooperation in agricultural technique, land consolidation management, the optimization of agricultural ecosystem, the treatment of land desertification, and so on. Comparing the Chinese agricultural present status with the African agricultural development status, the conclusion shows that the agricultural cooperation between China and Africa is mutual benefit. So the cooperation foreground is bright.