Category — Africa

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Organic Urban Agriculture in Quito, Ecuador

If we can plant orchards, build greenhouses and wormeries, buy seedlings, and train people though workshops, we can enable people to provide for and feed themselves and their children.

26% of Ecuador’s children under 5 suffer from malnourishment. Since 2000, the cost of food in Ecuador increased dramatically. It’s cheaper to buy a Peruvian potato than to produce it.

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By David D. Mkwambisi , Evan D. G. Fraser , Andy J. Dougill

Journal of International Development
Published Online: 17 Feb 2010

Abstract

Support of urban agriculture can be used as a route to reducing urban poverty across Sub-Saharan Africa. However policy makers require more precise information on how it contributes to alleviating food insecurity and poverty problems. This study in Malawi’s two main cities (Lilongwe and Blantyre) revealed two predominant types of urban farmers: (i) low-income, less educated, often female-headed households, who use urban agriculture as an insurance against income losses and who can employ skilled workers to support their livestock activities; and (ii) middle- and high-income, often male-headed households, that undertake urban agriculture for personal consumption and hire significant numbers of unskilled workers.

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Photo: Tonderai Kwidini/IPS
Small-scale farmer Ruth Chikweya working on her land near Harare.

By Varaidzo Dongozi
26 Jan 2010
Reuters AlertNet

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AlertNet) – Olivia Chitingo has been a farmer most of her adult life.

As a communal farmer in Murehwa district, approximately 120 kilometres east of Harare, the 46-year-old over the years grew maize, both as a cash crop and for her own consumption.

From her two hectares of land, she managed to produce 16 tonnes of grain each season, which was then ground into sadza, Zimbabwe’s staple food.
Most of it she sold to Zimbabwe’s Grain Marketing Board and mobile milling companies, and from each harvest she earned an average of $4,240, enough to meet most of her and her family’s needs.

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Kampala City Council LCV Production and Marketing Sectoral Committee on an Agricultural field visit (2008)

By Ssembalirwa Edward (Senior Fisheries officer)
Email: ssembalirwa@yahoo.com
December 2008

Excerpts:

Profile of the urban agriculture sector in Kampala City

Urban Agriculture in Kampala city is a constituent sector of Kampala City Council under the Department of Production, Marketing and Environment.
The sector is comprised of 5 sub sectors namely.

1. Crop Production and Extension services
2. Animal Production and Extension services
3. Fisheries and Aquaculture Production and extension services
4. Commercial Services, Trade and Cooperatives
5. Environment and Natural Resources

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Ethiopia. Photo by treesftf. See larger image here.

By Menberu Kitila
Ethiopia, Jimma – University
Email: kitilamenberu@yahoo.com.uk

Currently I am working as the head of the environmental protection and urban agriculture office in Jimma city in Ethiopia. Jimma city is 350 km. from the capital city of the country (Addis Ababa).

Also, I am a student(Msc.) of Horticulture (vegetable crop production) in Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine (JUCAVM).
My thesis research also deals with the UA activities (specifically tomato production) in the Jimma area.

Jimma city is one of the biggest cities found in the country and, more than 200,000 people are living here. It is the place where Coffee Arabica originated.

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Farm in Liberia

CARE
Closing date: 15 Feb 2010
Location: Liberia – Monrovia, Liberia

CARE is seeking an Urban Agriculture Expert for a proposed, USAID – funded, large-scale, multi-year Food and Enterprise Development Program to be based in Monrovia, Liberia. The Food and Enterprise Development (FED) Program will be implemented to achieve the following objectives: 1.) increase agricultural productivity and profitability; 2.) stimulate private enterprise growth and investment; and 3.) build local technical and managerial human resources to sustain and expand accomplishments achieved under objectives one and two.

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Produced by: International Water Management Institute
Year: 2005. Language: English with French subtitles

In sub-saharan Africa, where sanitation infrastructure does not keep pace with city growth, the use of polluted water for urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is a common reality. While UPA puts consumers at risk; it also plays an important role in food supply and job creation. The question is how to preserve the benefits while minimizing the risks?

This short video clip gives voice to the people most closely involved, to articulate their own solutions to the challenges they face. This video was produced by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and it’s partners to aid in knowledge sharing.

Sana’a Gardens. Photo by Jeff Lindstrom
Larger image here.

By Amwl Al-Ariqi
Source: Yemen Times (YCPMI)
Date: 28 Dec 2009

Yemen has suffered greatly during the world food crisis, since early 2008, which increased the number of people in poverty. About two million people are depending on the aids given by the World Food Program in Yemen.

The country imports as much as 75 per cent of its food requirements, and hence is vulnerable to shortages in world stocks. Yemen’s poorest households may have no mechanism to cope with astronomical prices, warned international aids agencies in Yemen.

The WFP says that higher prices have already forced six percent of the population of 20 millions according to 2004, below the poverty line.

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One of DIG’s first gardens in Dakar, Senegal.

Gardens in Senegal, Uganda, Dominican Republic, Namibia, Nicaragua, Kenya, and Tanzania

We help struggling HIV facilities establish a sustainable resource for food that they can maintain, create stability, and strengthen their community. DIG is the only organization focused on implementing urban micro-gardens to encompass a solution and create self-reliance instead of dependance.

Improved nutrition, food security, micro-enterprise development, home garden extension, personal empowerment, and social change are the focus of DIG’s efforts. Because each garden is unique DIG customizes it’s projects to meet the objectives of the specific facility. These projects often include vegetable diversification where DIG implements highly nutritious but under-utilized produce such as kale, collard greens, and chaya into the growing plan. Upon the harvest of these vegetables, DIG conducts classes on food preparation and how patients can best incorporate them into their diets.

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Danielle visits an urban farming project in Kibera and talks about the importance of agriculture in improving nutrition and incomes in urban settings.

Urban Agriculture in Africa

Danielle Nierenberg is a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and co-Project Director of State of World 2011: Nourishing the Planet. Her knowledge of sustainable agriculture issues, in particular factory farming and its global spread, has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and other media.

The following stories, videos and links are from Nourishing the Planet’s Weekly E-Newsletter, and include highlights from Danielle’s time in Kenya, where she met with farmers and visited projects on the ground to learn about and analyze environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating poverty and hunger.

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Behold Africa’s new urban farmers

By Juliet Torome
Project Syndicate
Oct 26, 2009

NAIROBI: When I met Eunice Wangari at a Nairobi coffee shop recently, I was surprised to hear her on her mobile phone, insistently asking her mother about the progress of a corn field in her home village, hours away from the big city. A nurse, Wangari counts on income from farming to raise money to buy more land – for more farming.

Even though Wangari lives in Kenya’s capital, she is able to reap hundreds of dollars a year in profit from cash crops grown with the help of relatives. Her initial stake – drawn from her nursing wages of about $350 a month – has long since been recovered.

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Guinea pig keepers in the North Kivu Province of Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo by Neil Palmer. Larger image here.

By Nyumbaiza Tambwe
Conference paperKMAfrica
2009 Dakar

Excerpts:

Introduction

The paper attempts to establish a relationship between urban agriculture and food security. In other words, it seeks to examine the impact of agricultural activities taking place within and around the city of Lubumbashi on household level. The paper uses the sustainable livelihood approach based on the theories of alternative development. Instead of identifying all strategies used in urban areas, the study focuses on urban agriculture because of its potential as source of food and income. On methodological level, using the non-probability sampling, the city was divided into its seven administrative wards. As each ward is administratively divided into areas, each area was taken as reference for the selection of informants.

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Ma Chaba and Ma Phillipina is two of six elders who started this garden next to the Phillipi Municipal building, Cape Town. They receive training and ongoing support from Abalimi, and regularly supply the Harvest of Hope box scheme with fresh organic veggies. Photo by konsciousimages. Larger image here.

Determining the features of urban agriculture, the current poverty response policies that are in place in the Southern African countries of South Africa and Zambia

By Nel, E.; Hampwaye, G.; Thornton, A.; Rogerson, C.M and Marais, L.
Global Development Network (GDN) Working Paper Series
2009, Africa

Urban agriculture (UA) has not always received adequate recognition in respect of institutional acceptance. In addition, institutional acceptance has often not been followed by proactive policy approaches. At the same time, decentralization in both South Africa and Zambia has resulted in a larger degree of local decision-making powers. This report evaluates said responses from eight case studies (four from Zambia and South Africa each) against the existing literature and policy frameworks.

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Reuters Video. Organic farms transform Nairobi slum. (Short advertisement at the start.)

Kibera (Nubian: Forest or Jungle) is a neighbourhood and province division of Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest of Nairobi’s slums, and the second largest urban slum in Africa, with an estimated population of between 600,000 and 1.2 million inhabitants.

Kiberas Youth Reform Organic Farm – Nairobi, Kenya

By Public Radio Exchange
“The Kibera Youth Reform Organic Farm began on a 3 meter deep garbage dump in Africa’s largest slum. The transformation started in April 2008 and took three and a half months, prooving anything is possible. Claire Niala asked Su Kahumbu, Director of Green Dreams (the first locally certified organic farm in Kenya) to assist the Kibera Youth Reform Group comprising 70 young men and women who had decided to change their ways of crime. They wished to transform a garbage site into a farm, growing crops for their own consumption as well as for sale if possible.

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Bangalore urban agriculture.

In this bulletin you will find information on:

1. RUAF From Seed to Table Programme

2. Other Urban Agriculture activities by the RUAF Partners

Food, Agriculture and Cities: challenges and way forward

Workshop on influencing and assisting national policy processes

Increasing recognition for urban agriculture in China

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Photo by Andre van Wyk/allAfrica

South Africa: Urban Subsistence Farmers Spread Wings

All Africa
30 October 2009

Cape Town — A project which began as an effort to empower citizens of Cape Town’s poorest neighbourhoods to grow their own food has mushroomed into a scheme for selling vegetables for the city’s wealthier residents.

When AllAfrica first visited the project, operated under the banner Abalimi Bezekhaya (’Planters of the Home’), nearly two years ago, its focus was on urban woman farmers practicing subsistence agriculture.

But when our reporters returned this week to one of the food gardens in the low-income suburbs spread around the edges of the city, tell-tale white markers were testimony to what community organizer Rob Small called “a big step forward.”

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Photo from RUAF, Anglophone West Africa.

By Juliet Torome
The Daily Star
October 31, 2009

When I met Eunice Wangari at a Nairobi coffee shop recently, I was surprised to hear her on her mobile phone, insistently asking her mother about the progress of a corn field in her home village, hours away from the big city. A nurse, Wangari counts on income from farming to raise money to buy more land – for more farming.

Even though Wangari lives in Kenya’s capital, she is able to reap hundreds of dollars a year in profits from cash crops grown with the help of relatives. 

Her initial stake – drawn from her nursing wages of about $350 a month – has long since been recovered.

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Njawara womens garden Rajhedem. Photo by Foods Resource Bank.

By Molly Slothower
30 July 2009 MediaGlobal – Voice of the Global South
MediaGlobal is the global news agency, based in the United Nations Secretariat, creating awareness in the media for the countries of the global South, with a strong focus on South-South Cooperation.

Urban agriculture key to alleviating world hunger

The urban poor have been hit the hardest by the global hunger epidemic, which has been fueled by the ongoing food, economic, financial, and environmental crises.

Getting healthy food into cities in sufficient quantities is an extremely difficult task. For the first time in the history of mankind, over half the world’s population lives in cities.

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The new publication Women Feeding Cities – Mainstreaming gender in urban agriculture and food security is now available online. This publication analyses the roles of women and men in urban food production, processing and marketing in case studies from 3 development regions and includes field tested guidelines and tools for gender mainstreaming.

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de Moussa Sy (Auteur), Ndèye Fatou Diop Guèye (Auteur), Salimata Seck Wone (Auteur)
Editeur : Karthala (6 mars 2009)
Broché: 192 pages

Une recherche participative pour le développement durable de l’agriculture urbaine a été conduite de 2001 à 2004 à Dakar, Niamey, Cotonou, Nouakchott, Ouagadougou, Abidjan et Bamako. Dans un contexte peu favorable, caractérisé par des contraintes qui inhibent ses énormes potentialités, cette activité parvient à occuper des milliers de personnes, à réduire la malnutrition, à générer des revenus et à préserver l’environnement.

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