Is it reasonable to ask an African farmer to produce more food and to adopt more intensive production techniques? Yes if?and only if?this farmer is convinced that he will be able to actually sell the corresponding surplus to a predictable, accessible, and growing market. Food security and rural poverty alleviation in Africa are therefore less a question of technology and agricultural production per se than a question of developing domestic and regional markets by means of urbanization and the resulting division of labor between producers and consumers of food. By focusing on population dynamics and on urban-rural interactions, this article proposes a genuine paradigm shift.