Category — Africa

In this edition we focus on a number of initiatives that are working with governments and urban farmers to remove barriers and provide incentives, inputs and training in order to empower the poor and contribute to their food security and nutrition.

New Agriculturist
May 2013

Excerpt from editorial:

Over the next decade, sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population is forecast to increase by almost 45 percent – an extraordinary figure by any standards. For millions of Africa’s rural-urban migrants, the challenges of city life are all too real. Yet urban agriculture, for years outlawed by municipal authorities, offers solutions to numerous urban problems, including poverty, food and nutrition insecurity, unemployment and waste management.

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An urban farmer in Nairobi, capital of Kenya. Photo by Andrea Booher, UNDP.

“You can easily identify an urban farmer in social circles. They are the ones who will steer the conversation to “farming is the way to go” at dinner tables, lunches and casual encounters.”

By Mary Itumbi – a journalist based in Nairobi.
Voices of Africa
May 2013

Excerpt:

Rosa is part of a new group of young, urban working-class Kenyans who have decided to take up farming to boost their income. This choice of career may be unusual but it’s smart and strategic: they can save the extra income they’re making now for when they retire from their formal jobs, and then take up farming full-time when they’re older.

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General map of the project consortium. Suggested test site cities are marked red. (Map by Ralf Wieland, Geography Department, Ruhr-University Bochum, 2012)

The plan is to conduct small crop-growing experiments, to interview growers, sellers and government officials as well as to teach local farmers about new techniques they can adopt

By Olivia Solon
Wired UK
May 8, 2013

Excerpt:

“For a long time, scientists were so concerned with the hinterland, thereby neglecting the issue of urban food production — which is efficient, but still offers far greater possibilities for increased yields. We must tap this potential too, if we are to keep abreast of population increases”, explains Bürkert. Africa already has a billion people living in it, and is predicted to almost double by 2050.

The German team are partnering with 14 African institutes to develop ways to increase food production in urban areas and understand how this sort of farming can help generate economic growth. Initial research will take place in Burkina Faso and Ghana, before extending to other West African cities including Camaroon, Mali and Nigeria.

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8 women will be trained per year in the growing of vegetables and fruit, beekeeping and the principles of successful animal husbandry.

By Nina Johannsen
2013

I work with Growing the Future, an annual organic agriculture and life skills training program for underprivileged women in Gansbaai, South Africa. Growing the Future believe that urban food production can not only provide for the basic human right of, access to adequate food, but also be a route to levering other outcomes such as; an income, a road to employment and enterprise, education, community coherence and improved access to assets and rights.

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See ‘Which way for UPA in Africa? by Diana Lee-Smith’

CITY, 2013
VOL. 17, NO. 1,
Introduction Adrian Atkinson, Page 68
Which way for UPA in Africa? Diana Lee-Smith, Pages 69-84
Readjusting to reality Adrian Atkinson, Pages 85-96

Introduction
Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture: Part Two Introduction
By Adrian Atkinson

In the previous issue of the journal (16.6), we opened up the question of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), a dimen-
sion of urban evolution that is currently growing almost everywhere. The papers in the past issue of City looked respectively at the political and cultural aspects of these developments as they are occurring in cities in the global North. In this issue we move into other territory.

The first paper is a review of the growth of UPA in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing particularly on whether it is genuinely addressing the needs of the poor in a situation of rapidly growing malnutrition. On this score, the paper is not optimistic, but indicates nevertheless what opportunities are opening up to increase local food production.

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(Brilliant concept. Mike)

Corrugated iron and timber need not represent poverty and oppression.

By Stephen Lamb and Andrew Lord
Touching the Earth Lightly
Feb 2013

Excerpt:

To explain the concept, hold in your mind a cube. Like the shack, the cube has six sides. Human-hearted design looks to address the issues of fire, flooding, food security and insulation by exploring design opportunities for each of these six sides.

The first side of the cube is the floor. We raise the shack off the ground to respond to the issue of flooding. Communities around the world have been doing this for thousands of years. This is not a new concept.

The next two sides of the cube represent the sun-facing walls of the shack. On these two sides The Green Shack suggests they be wrapped with a fire-proof boarding, covered by a vertical thriving organic vegetable garden. This wall garden creates food for the household. This wall is drip irrigated using a low tech, slow-release gravity fed system via a pipe made of re-cycled car tires. Rain water is also captured off the roof and stored on site. The slow-drip nature of the irrigation system ensures that the wall is constantly wet.

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Illustration by Virginia Poltrack.

The potential for urban agriculture to contribute to food sovereignty as defined by Via Campesina, with a case study set in Kampala

By Christopher Yap
Email: chriskyap@gmail.com
Masters dissertation, supervised by Professor Yves Cabannes
Development Planning Unit, University of London
2012

Excerpt from Conclusion:

It appears that urban agriculture is making a significant contribution to the realization of the Right to Food in low-income households in Kampala. At the Outcome level, there is a clear link between urban farming and child nutrition in low-income households. Moreover it is possible to legitimately suggest that urban agriculture is increasing physical and economic access to food at a household level through a combination of income generation activities and substance farming, although there is insufficient data to quantify the rate at which the process is happening.

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Photo of the 3D model (made by the Farm’s landscape architect, Tanya de Villiers). Photo by Oranjezicht City Farm.

With numerous under-utilised public green spaces in Cape Town, Sheryl Ozinsky hopes to unite and educate communities through self-sustaining urban farms.

By Maciek Dubla
VISI
Feb 13, 2013

Excerpt:

In South Africa, the idea of urban farming has taken some time to take root and grow, but it’s about to gain momentum with the development of the Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) – the first in a project that will hopefully grow into 20 city farms throughout Cape Town.

Sheryl Ozinsky, one of the project champions, meets me onsite at the farm located between Sidmouth Avenue and Upper Orange Street. While still being laid out, the basic design is in place and the beds are being sown with vegetable seeds by one of the farmers, Johannes, an ex-miner from Limpopo. Local residents hatched the idea of the project some years ago, but Sheryl’s passion for the OZCF is still strong.

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Look to the sky: City of Cape Town’s roof top food garden. Photo by Russell Galt.

“There are lots of unused spaces out there where if the community came together they could grow food, and have fun at the same time.”

By Steven Bland
Future Cape Town
February 7, 2013

Excerpt:

To really achieve urban food production at scale, perhaps we have to look to the skies. Tucked away above the 12th floor of the City of Cape Town’s offices on 44 Wale Street is a small green space of tranquillity and calm. Once no more than a square of barren metal, the place is now teeming with beetroot, spinach and parsley. I sit in the heat with the man behind this creation Stephen Lamb, founder of Touching the Earth Lightly. We munch on vitamin C rich Spekboom leaves. He tells me: “This is about using every un-used roof space, and connecting people in cities with the soil that is beneath them.” By literally putting it above them.

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Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) overlooking the city. Photo by Steven Bland.

Micro-farmers benefit from improved health, renewed dignity and social connectedness, as well as vital additional income

By Steven Bland
Future Capetown
February 6, 2013

Excerpt:

Up in the hills of Oranjezicht, something is stirring. What strikes you at first is the size. At 2450sq.m including 700-800sq.m of growing beds, this is no back garden. “In summer, we’re going to need at least 4,000 litres a day”, says Mario, the ex-organic farmer who’s tasked with turning this ex-bowling green into an urban oasis of efficient organic production. “It’s got to be quality, organic produce” he tells me. He is a man with a mission: to create an economically viable urban farm in the heart of Cape Town.

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Soukra, Tunisia. Focus Cities: Helping urban farmers adapt to climate change and water stress. By IDRCCRDI.

RUAF Update # 18 January 2013

Ir. Marielle Dubbeling has been appointed the new Director of the RUAF Foundation. She has taken over from Ir. Henk de Zeeuw, as per 1 October 2012. We again want to express our heart-felt thanks to Henk de Zeeuw for all the work he did in the past years. Henk will continue working for RUAF, though on a part-time basis.

Excerpt from bulletin:

Lima (Peru)
In October 2012, The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima (Peru) approved two new ordinances that recognise and promote urban agriculture in the city: (1) Ordinance N° 1628 approves the Environmental Metropolitan Policy, and makes explicit reference to the promotion of urban agriculture and the re-use of treated waste water for urban greening; (2) Ordinance N° 1629, promotes the development of urban agriculture as a strategy for environmental management, social inclusion and local economic development in the Province of Lima and announces the creation of a Municipal Programme on Urban Agriculture. For the coming 2 years the following targets have been set:
• the creation of more than 2000 new urban gardens
• to join 33000 urban farmers in an urban farming network

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Livestock in the Slum: A visit to an urban farm in Kenya

By Anders Kelto
PRI’s The World
Jan. 28, 2013
Anders Kelto is The World’s Africa Correspondent. He is based in Cape Town, South Africa, and reports on health and development issues. Prior to joining The World, he worked with NPR, the CBC, and National Geographic.

Excerpt:

Kahawa Soweto is a slum on the northeast edge of Nairobi, Kenya. Children chase each other down a narrow dirt road, passing women with water jugs.

It’s a densely packed area, and it’s not just people that live here.

“We have [chickens] here,” says Regina Wangari as she opens the door to a shack that she recently converted into a coop. “Outside we have almost 20 of them – here in the ghetto.”

Wangari lets the chickens roam freely around the slum, nibbling on bits of garbage and grass.

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Danielle Nierenberg, Food Tank co-founder, researching urban agriculture.

Why it’s important for the funding and donor communities and policy-makers to invest in urban agriculture

By Danielle Nierenberg
Co-Founder, Food Tank
January, 2013
For the 2013 Urban Agriculture Summit, Linköping, Sweden

More than half of all people in the world live in cities. By 2050, 80 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas, according to the United Nations. And today, at least 800 million people worldwide participate in some form of urban food production. Finding better ways for farmers and food entrepreneurs to grow food, raise livestock, and process and manufacture food in cities is more important than ever before.

And there are hundreds of initiatives around the world helping urban farmers, businesses, and consumers, find ways to grow, sell, and process food in cities.

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Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia.

President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to give Keynote

National Conference “Enhancing Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture for sustainable livelihoods”
14-15 February, 2013
University of Liberia/City Hall
Monrovia

Agriculture is seen as the backbone of Liberia, but it is estimated that Liberia only meets a third of her total food consumption requirements from local production. Cities are quickly becoming the principle territories for intervention and planning of innovative strategies that aim to eradicate urban hunger and improve livelihoods. Many urban households seek to increase their food production, as a way to provide their families with fresh and nutritious food, and some of them also sell this on the market.

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Teddy Kinyanjui poses with some of the produce from his farm on Ngecha Road, Spring Valley, Nairobi. Photo by Diana Ngila.

The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that 70 per cent of the city’s fresh produce supplies come from urban and peri-urban farms.

By Evelyn Situma
Business Daily Africa
January 10, 2013

Excerpt:

Mr Waweru earns a handsome return from his farm every month and his cows produce about 240 litres of milk a day.

For Teddy Kinyanjui, 29, who has a charcoal oven and a heap of organic manure decomposing at the edge of his compound on Ngecha Road, Spring Valley, has found City Council of Nairobi askaris at his gate a couple of times.

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Kigali City Centre from the Genocide Memorial. At the bottom of the valley between them one finds rice paddies and small workshops. Photo by Brayo.

The master plan of the city envisages farming spaces where each residential plot must allocate at least 20% of the surface to farming activities.

By Eric Didier Karinganire
All Africa
25 Dec. 2012

Excerpt:

Two years ago, Valerie Mukabaramba turned to growing crops in a marshland in her neighborhood of Gisozi in Kigali City’s Gasabo district. She had been a hawker around the city for several years but life became increasingly tough for this mother of four.

She now grows sweet potatoes, maize and vegetables as the only source of food for family and income for other basic needs. “I have no other skills, yet hawking in the city is very risky. But I’m able to survive and get basic needs through farming,” she said in a recent interview.

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Food gardens bring relief

Mail and Garden
03 DEC 2012

Excerpt:

Johannesburg City Parks has recently planted 7 000 fruit trees and rolled out 42 food gardens in schools and various public institutions.

City Parks has also developed plans in initiate a large-scale urban agriculture site in the far north of the City to encourage farming by small and micro-enterprises.

These programmes provide much-need nutrition to vulnerable learners and simultaneously foster high levels of environmental awareness in the respective benefiting communities.

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Growing vegetable crops within African towns and cities, to supply urban markets, is becoming increasingly popular. By FAO/Erick-Christian Ahounou.

No doubt, urban farming is a highly emotive issue, whose existence will continue to exercise the minds of local authorities for years to come.

By Tawanda Ngena
The Herald
5 December 2012

Excerpt:

According to social commentator and city watcher Malcolm Leppard, the way forward is simple.

“Municipal authorities must, instead of the present uncontrolled and haphazard approach, identify and allocate appropriate land, taking into consideration all ratepayers’ needs,” he recently said in one of his newspaper articles.

He suggested that plot size be no greater than 250 square metres in order to accommodate as many families as possible.

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Food Market, Dakar, Senegal. Photo by By Easy Traveler.

Urban agriculture in the Dakar region alone generated 450 million dollars in 2011, supplying 45 percent of the city’s food supply.

By Koffigan E. Adigbli
All Africa
26 Nov. 2012

Excerpt:

Dakar — Watering cans in hand, men and women move back and forth between the wells and water storage tanks and the crops they’re watering: carrots, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and potatoes, as well as fruit trees like palm, coconut, papaya and banana trees.

Growers like Ahmadou Sene are working tirelessly to produce vegetables in and around the Senegalese capital. Sene, in his forties, has a one-hectare plot. For three months of the year, he has a dozen young people to hoe and weed the garden, and for four months a group of 20 women work to harvest and sell his produce.

“Vegetables make up more than 80 percent of my crops,” he said, gesturing towards his garden. He cultivates his field year round, and harvests nearly 12 tonnes of vegetables each quarter.

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Policy Narrative on urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Liberia

Analysis of UPA in Greater Monrovia, Tubmanburg
and Gbarnga, facilitated by Welthungerhilfe, CARE
Liberia and RUAF, under their UPA programmes (EU
funded).
April 2012

Excerpt: Introduction

The total population of Liberia is estimated at 3.9 million with an annual average growth rate of 2.1 (GoL, 2011a). Almost 50 percent is living in urban areas, and Liberia is rapidly urbanizing with an annual urban population growth of 4.5 percent (ACF, 2010; GoL, 2010). The majority of this urban population, estimated at around 1.2 million, lives in Greater Monrovia, but due to rural-to-urban migration and continued unrest in the region, smaller urban settlements, such as Gbarnga (approximately 35,000 inhabitants) and Tubmanburg (approximately 20,000) are also growing rapidly. Attention to sustainable development of these smaller cities is increasingly seen as important (UN Habitat, 2006, GoL, 2011b). Greater Monrovia stretches over 20,000 ha, including the city of Monrovia, several townships and the city of Paynesville. The organisation under the Greater Monrovia City is being discussed.

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