Senegal Hosts Experts Meeting On Urban Agriculture

Peri-urban vegetable farm in Burkina Faso. Photo by Timothy J. Krupnik.

City-planners must make urban horticulture an integral part of their development and planning strategies to meet the challenges of improving nutrition and feeding a growing population in the face of rapid urbanization, FAO Assistant Director-General Modibo Traoré told a symposium on urban and peri-urban horticulture in Dakar, Senegal.

Written by Adeleke Mainasara
Africa Science News
07 December 2010

Excerpt:

“It is time to act to ensure urban and peri-urban horticulture finds its rightful place in greener cities development policies and that it will be synonymous with opportunities and hope for the inhabitants,” he said.

More than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, now lives in urban areas, one billion of them residing in slums, mainly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. As the global population increases three billion more city dwellers are expected by 2050.

Rapid urbanization goes hand in hand with rising poverty and unemployment and child malnutrition rates are now frequently higher in cities than in rural areas, Traoré said. The vegetables and fruit grown in pots, courtyards, tires and on marginal land are, for millions of people, the most important source of vitamins and micro-nutrients, he said.

“It is therefore urgent to mainstream urban and peri urban horticulture and to recognize its role as a motor in food security and nutrition strategies,” said Traoré.

He also pointed out the importance that municipal authorities ensure that urban horticulturalists have access to the natural resources they need, namely land and water.

“The International Symposium on Urban and Peri Urban Horticulture in the Century of Cities” (6-9 December) is organized jointly by the Government of Senegal and the FAO.

It gathers together more than one hundred experts on urban horticulture from Africa and elsewhere discussing key issues from marketing vegetables grown on urban plots to safely treating domestic waste water for irrigation to food safety.

Read the complete article here.

See Symposium Programme and Abstracts here.