ザンビアにおける食糧安全保障体制の構築過程 ―早期警戒システムと災害対応機関の歴史と現状―

摘要

In Sub-Saharan Africa, establishment of an early warning system and disaster management policy has been an urgent matter since the 1970s. In Zambia, the initial effort for enhancing national food security started in the early 1980s. In FY 2008 research, we focused on the historical process of establishment of food security institutions and the system of food aid by examining administration documents in several organizations and field surveys. The purpose of my research is to analyse the political and social process of building food security institutions in which several international organizations have been involved, especially focusing on the establishment of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) and the Vulnerability Assessment Committee (VAC).This paper firstly examines the concept of ‘Food Security’ that has a significant influence for development policies in Sub-Saharan African countries. The concept and its focus have been changed and sophisticated since the 1970s. Food aid is a main measure widely adopted to enhance the food security in the developing countries. Especially, the U.S. has continued to be the biggest supplier of food aid in the world. The recipient countries of food aid have increasingly shifted from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa in the 2000s.The research on the food security institutions in Zambia reveals that several organizations and systems for food security have been built with external funding since the 1980s, but many of them have not functioned effectively enough, partly because of lack of government initiative and ownership for those projects. In the process, United Nation’s organizations, such as FAO, UNICEF, the World Bank and other donor agencies have played important roles as financial supporters. Nevertheless, those newly built agencies frequently stopped their activities or reduced their functions when the financial support ended. Since the establishment of the DMMU and VAC, the food security institution has been much improved, but the actual implementation still has many difficulties.In the 2008 fieldwork, we observed the actual implementation of the government food relief programme and the distribution of maize grain in the Sinazongwe district, in which we found some problems concerning its delivery and distribution at the local level. Our research issue in FY 2009 will be focused on an intensive field study about those government institutions’ activities and their impacts on local communities. By interviewing NGO staff, camp officers and local farmers, we will try to investigate the food relief programmes and the local responses to them. Through the research, we are expecting to reveal the social and political impact of early warning and disaster management activities on the resilience of local communities.