Category — Africa

Édité par le Bureau Agriculture Urbaine de l’IAGU.

Villes Agricoles
Le bulletin de l’agriculture urbaine en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone
Edité par l’IAGU-BAU BP 104, Tél. : 20 98 16 54 Email : iagu.aup@iagu.org Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Directeur de publication : Moussa SY

Excerpt:

Editorial
par Moussa SY, Coordonnateur IAGU-BAU

Les fonctions sociales économiques et environnementales de l’agriculture urbaine sont de plus en plus reconnues à travers le monde. Ce secteur d’activités sort ainsi progressivement de l’anonymat grâce aux études et recherches portant sur plusieurs aspects le concernant (accès au foncier et à l’eau, organisation des producteurs, accès au marché, qualité des produits, etc.). Mais l’agriculture urbaine souffre encore de son défaut d’articulation avec les politiques d’urbanisme et agricoles.

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Forget the humble veggie patch!

House and Leisure
July, 2011

Excerpt:

It’s a new dawn for farming in the city. Cape Town blogger and urban farmer Matt Allison has turned his garden into an all-out allotment, producing more than 40 varieties of herbs and vegetables. He chatted to HL’s assistant editor Leigh Robertson about his gardening passion…

Out in the suburbs the drone of lawnmowers is a common soundtrack to sunny weekends, with pottering around the garden something of a national sport. But while most people might be found doing normal suburban gardening pursuits like, say, pruning roses or trimming hedges, peer over the fence into the backyard of Capetonian Matt Allison and you’ll find things looking decidedly more rural.

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Kinshasa. Many city-dwellers are turning to urban farming to make a living. Photo: David Hecht/IRIN.

Green space throughout Kinshasa and other Congolese cities are being transformed into lucrative small urban farming enterprises that are doing a lot to raise incomes and lower malnutrition for urban residents.

IRIN,
28 June, 2011

Excerpt:

“At first I doubted the ability of vegetable growers to pay back credit,” said Dick Mabiala, a credit agent at FINCA. “But I changed my mind when a lady growing fruit and vegetables took a $300 credit and came back to deposit $1,000 worth of profits into her account. The woman was only using two hectares of land for her enterprise.”

Farmers have seen their incomes increase dramatically. In Kinshasa and in the town of Lubumbashi the average annual income of each farmer increased from around $500 in 2004 to $2,000 in 2010. In Likasi town it rose from $700 to $3,500. There have been similar increases in other cities, according to the FAO statement.

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Baby in the cabbage patch – women and children the biggest beneficiaries of urban horticulture.

How a project for development of urban and peri-urban horticulture in five cities is helping to grow 150,000 tonnes of vegetables a year — supply fresh, nutritious produce to 11.5 million urban residents
— build sustainable livelihoods for 16,000 small-scale market gardeners — generate jobs and income for 60,000 people in the horticulture value chain

City malnutrition drops as more affordable fruit and vegetables available

FAO Press Release
10 June 2011

Rome – An FAO urban horticulture programme in the five main cities of the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken a bite out of chronic malnutrition levels in urban areas and created a surplus with a market value of over $400 million.

The programme, started as a response to mass urban migration following a five-year conflict in the eastern DRC, now assists local urban growers to produce 330 000 tons of vegetables annually.

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Youth Agricultural Ambassadors (YAA).

Wendy Tsotetsi, an authoritative voice in urban horticulture

By Kwanele Sosibo
Mail and Guardian
May 27, 2011

Excerpt:

Tsotetsi first met Tshediso Phahlane, YAA’s co-founder, through a pig farmer in the area named Anna Phosa, with whom they were both interested in working. They recruited other young people with an interest in horticulture, identified possible spaces and secured permission from the municipality to set up projects on the land. Initially, the projects were self-funded, but they managed to secure additional resources through the municipality’s extended public-works programme.

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A comparative study: Urban Agriculture in Vancouver, Dar es Salaam and Copenhagen
 
Independent Study by Afton Halloran
University of Copenhagen
Faculty of Life Science
Jan 21, 2011
 
Abstract

Although generally thought of as a livelihood strategy for the urban poor in developing countries, urban agriculture is prevalent in both the global South and North. Urban agriculture has been heralded for its environmental, social and economic benefits. However, in some cities it is an unrecognized practice and some typologies of urban agriculture are even treated as illegal.

Urban planning has an important influence in determining the structure of a city. This paper argues that urban planners are important stakeholders, which influence the successfulness urban agriculture legitimization and its incorporation into the urban environment.

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The Positive Kitchen Garden

This is a name that we have given to our core work – to encourage community groups to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Rich in the minerals and vitamins to boost the immune system of HIV Positive people, they help improve the whole community’s nutrition and health. The Positive Kitchen Garden can often utilise ‘unused land’, bringing even small areas into food production.

Real Impact agronomists train the group how to get all-year-round production using modern farming technology such as drip irrigation, hybrid seed, vermi-compost vermi-liquid fertiliser and integrated pest management (IPM) to reduce reliance on pesticides and inorganic fertilizers but improve yield and quality.

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The Multidimensional Benefit of Urban Agriculture – Urban Vegetable Production: a three decades Struggle against Poverty in the Heart of an International Diplomatic City of Addis Ababa

By Tamirat Assefa,
Bezabih Emana
Apr 10, 2011
Publisher:VDM Verlag Dr. Müller

In a poor country where agriculture is not only the livelihood of most population, sticking to the traditional methods of production, harvesting and marketing will not only hold the producers under the yoke of destitute living conditions but also results in inefficient utilization of scarce resources. Urban vegetable production has been practiced in Addis Ababa for almost three decades by vegetable producers’ cooperatives along river banks.

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Urban farmers in Casablanca.

Urban Agriculture Casablanca

Urban Agriculture Casablanca is a German-Moroccan research project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the megacity research programme “Research for the Sustainable Development of Megacities of Tomorrow, Focus: Energy- and climate-efficient structures in urban growth centres”.

Based on the results of the preliminary project phase (07/2005 – 03/2008), Urban Agriculture Casablanca is a research and development project with a main project phase of five years duration (04/2008 – 03/2013).

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Cross-section of Dixville Urban and Peri-urban Farmers.

German-Agro Action Manager Urges Mutual Aid to Farmer Groups

By Edwin M. Fayia III
Liberian Observer
March 31, 2011

Excerpt:

An international non-governmental organization working in Liberia’s agriculture sector, has begun encouraging farmers to choose their leaders through the democratic process.

Welthungerhilfe, (formerly German Agro-Action) from March 25- 28, 2011, worked with forty two Urban Farmer Associations to elect their leaders in Dixville, Montserrado County and Tubmanburg, Bomi County.

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By Alice J. Hovorka
Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography,
1360-0524, Volume 13, Issue 3, 2006
Pages 207 – 225

Abstract

The research draws on a feminist political ecology perspective to demonstrate that agrarian restructuring and rural-urban transformation in Botswana offers women opportunities to renegotiate their marginalised positionality within the commercial urban agricultural sector in Greater Gaborone. Men and women participate in equal numbers, and both perceive of this sector as offering them new and accessible avenues for economic and social advancement. Although there is continuity of women’s social and economic disadvantage relative to men from rural to urban contexts, women are actively making claims on land and capitalising on their traditional roles and responsibilities associated with poultry production.

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Recent innovations in urban agriculture production technologies promote space and waste management

By Toni Bacala
Media Global
23 Feb, 2011

Excerpt:

“There is increasing recognition of the urbanization of the world and the role that urban and peri-urban agriculture plays to provide food supplies for the population that is most vulnerable in cities,” Daniel Gustafson, Director of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Liaison Office for North America told MediaGlobal.

Urban growth has been tightly linked with the rise of slum population. In sub-Saharan Africa, the swelling of urban population with migrants displaced from conflict and natural disasters has pushed many people to the slums, which is now 62 percent of its urban populace.

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This video shows urban agriculture in Ghana

Produced by: Ileia, Mildred Samuel
(Very useful video. Mike.)

A micro-farm in Nyanga. Photo by Vincent Mounier.

Abalimi bezekhaya means “the planters of the home” in Xhosa.

By Vincent Mounier
Coriolistic Anachronisms
A neo photography blog
Feb 12, 2011

Excerpt:

This year’s visit to the townships of Khayelitsha and Nyanga was radically different from the last one. A year ago, we had been on the purely touristic track at the very knowledgable hands of our friend Thabang.

This time, guided by an insider of a different background – Rob Small, activist at heart and micro-agriculturist – we visited various outposts of Harvest of Hope and the Abalimi Bezekhaya organization, which describes itself as follows:

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Veuillez trouver ci-joint le numéro 1 du Bulletin d’information « Villes Agricoles » édité par le Bureau Agriculture Urbaine de l’IAGU.

Fanta CISSAO
Secrétaire de Direction
Bureau Agriculture Urbaine
de l’Institut Africain de Gestion Urbaine (IAGU-BAU)
BP : 104 Tél : (226) 20 98 16 54
Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Email : iagu.aup@iagu.org

See the 10 page bulletin here (3MB).

Video documenting the bio-intensive method at work in Kenya

GROW BIOINTENSIVE was developed by John Jeavons and Ecology Action. It has been successfully used in 142 countries around the world. This film was produced to further a global movement toward biologically intensive sustainable farming and the work of Ecology Action and G BIACK.

Link to John Jeavons work here.

Session Internationale De Formation
Processus Participatif De Planification Et De Formulation De Politiques (3pfp) En Agriculture Urbaine

Contexte de la Formation

Les dernières décennies ont été marquées par une augmentation sans précédent de la population urbaine. En Afrique, au Sud du Sahara, plus de 38% de la population vit dans les villes. A l’horizon 2030, il est prévu que près de la moitié de la population de l’Afrique au Sud du Sahara sera urbaine (UNS, 2007). Une telle urbanisation a eu comme corollaire l’exacerbation de la compétition pour l’accès aux biens et services (eau, assainissement, éducation, santé, habitat, etc.) et subséquemment une forte pression exercée sur les ressources disponibles de plus en plus limitées. Cette situation rend également l’accès aux aliments plus difficile.

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“Vertical gardens” helped Nairobi families survive when unrest after the 2008 elections shut down roads and prevented food from coming into the cities. Photo credit: Bernard Pollack.

Nourishing the Planet asks What Works?

By Mara Schechter
WorldWatch
2011-01-25

Excerpt:

Small urban gardens can help women, who compose the majority of urban farmers. Urban Harvest, an initiative to enhance urban agriculture’s potential and food security supports community farms and projects in Kenya. These help women improve their income and networks of information and skills. In Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, located in Nairobi, over 1,000, mainly female, farmers now grow food quickly and in small spaces by filling tall sacks with soil and poking holes on different levels to plant seeds.

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Press launch of State of the World 2011

At the January 12, 2011 launch of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet at WNYC’s The Greene Space in New York City, Nourishing the Planet co-Project Director, Danielle Nierenberg, discussed how urban farming can not only improve food security for people living in cities, but also provide support and materials for farmers in rural areas, as well.

Link here.

Prisoners in Mombasa tend vegetables grown in sacks, a new technology that is gaining acceptance among Nairobi’s slum dwellers.

A sack containing vegetables such as sukuma wiki (kale), spinach and capsicum can feed one household for at least two months

By Bob Koigi
Business Daily Africa
January 11, 2011

Nairobi’s slum dwellers suffer some of the poorest nutrition of all Kenyans according to recent surveys by the World Food Programme, eking out an existence on typically less than a dollar a day, and with scant means of earning any better livelihood: until the arrival of a new urban farming programme that is now transforming the lives of thousands.

The novel scheme, run by Italian NGO COOPI Cooperazione Internazionale, is built to begin each family that joins the scheme on a new path of food self sufficiency and higher earnings.

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