Category — Africa

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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(This photo is not from Zimbabwe.)

Position of Harare councillors on the barbaric slashing of maize

Written by MDC Information & Publicity Department
The Zimbabwean
12 January, 2011

Harare councillors held an emergency caucus meeting on 11 January 2011 at Harvest House following the slashing of maize in the city and came out with the following position;

Harare City councillors dissociate themselves and condemn the ongoing barbaric destruction of the staple maize crop in the high density areas of the city. Council has never made such a resolution. The MDC is a pro-poor political party and is fully behind all livelihood support programmes among them urban agriculture.

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Currently, the majority of urban farmers live in Asia, but as Africa’s cities continue to grow—by 14 million people every year—they are increasingly becoming centers for food production and innovation.

By Danielle Nierenberg
Nourishing the Planet
WorldWatch
2010-12-21
This post is part of a series where Nourishing the Planet asks its readers: What works?

Excerpt:

In Accra, Ghana, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a non-profit organization working in Asia and Africa to improve water and land management for farmers and the environment, is working with farmers to increase harvests and improve sanitation. Many urban farmers use waste water to irrigate their crops and to clean their produce, causing a sanitation concern.

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Photograph of women harvesting leafy greens in Kalale-Benin. Photo by Dov Pasternak.

The findings from the present study showed a clear evidence of the dynamics of malaria transmission in urban or sub-urban areas of Benin where vegetable farming activities have grown extensively.

By Anges Yadouleton, N’guessan Raphael, Allagbe Hyacinthe, Alex Asidi, Boko Michel, Osse Razack, Padonou Gil, Kinde Gazard and Akogbeto Martin
Parasites & Vectors 2010,
3:118doi:10.1186/1756-3305-3-118
Published: 12 December 2010

Abstract (provisional)

Background
Urban agricultural practices are expanding in several cities of the Republic of Benin. This study aims to assess the impact of such practices on transmission of the malaria parasite in major cities of Benin.

Method
A cross sectional entomological study was carried out from January to December 2009 in two vegetable farming sites in southern Benin (Houeyiho and Acron) and one in the northern area (Azereke). The study was based on sampling of mosquitoes by Human Landing Catches (HLC) in households close to the vegetable farms and in others located far from the farms.

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Zimbabwean Herbert Nyahanana digs out weeds in a maize field on the outskirts of the capital Harare. Photo by Howard Burditt.

“I have been depending on urban farming for a long time but I can no longer do the farming because houses have taken over.”

By Fungi Kwaramba
The Zimbabwean
08 December 2010

CHITUNGWIZA – Despite the country being soaked with December rains, one feature has disappeared from the face of the ever-expanding town of Chitungwiza – maize fields.

New houses have taken over and urban farming has consequently vanished. Not so long ago people used open spaces in urban areas as mini-fields, but that has gone as urban expansion is increasing at neck breaking pace.

While for some urban farming was a hobby, there are many who relied on it heavily and even had barns in their yards.

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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.

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Watch the video here. The photo above is by Emmanuel Audu. His website is Catfish Farming in Nigeria here.

Nigeria has to import fish to make up for the short fall in their domestic catch. But in downtown Lagos there is solution: farming lungfish, also know as catfish

Excerpt from: “Nigeria: Catfish Farming – a Reliable Investment”

By Taiwo Bernard
Vanguard
14 April 2009

Lagos — Many species of fish are farm produced all over the world, but Catfish is taking the lead because of its uniqueness.

Data available shows that 260 million kilogrammes of Catfish was produced compared to five million kilogrammes of Tilapia, 7.7 million kilogrammes of Crawfish/ Crayfish/Shrimp; 2.68 million kilogrammes of Trout; and 50 million kilogrammes of Salmon in the United States of America alone.

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Image by Stephanie Carter.

Eleven articles on urban agriculture in Vertigo – The electronic journal of Environmental Science

Vertigo, Vol 10, No. 2
Sept. 2010. In French
Articles about UA in Europe, America and Africa by authors from various backgrounds. This issue was coordinated by Eric Duchemin Institute of Environmental Sciences at UQAM (Canada), Luc Mougeot IDRC (Canada) and Joe Nasr Ryerson College (Canada).

Louiza Boukharaeva et Marcel Marloie
L’apport du jardinage urbain de Russie à la théorisation de l’agriculture urbaine

Manon Boulianne, Geneviève Olivier-d’Avignon et Vincent Galarneau
Les retombées sociales du jardinage communautaire et collectif dans la conurbation de Québec

Emmanuel Pezrès
La permaculture au sein de l’agriculture urbaine : Du jardin au projet de société

Christian Peltier
Agriculture et projet urbain durables en périurbain : la nécessité d’un réel changement de paradigme

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Market gardening systems around Mahajanga (Madagascar)

By M. Mawoisa, C. Aubryb and M. Le Bailc
UMR Innovation, France
INRA, UMR SADAPT, France
22 October 2010

Abstract

The rapid urbanization in developing countries implies an increasing pressure on urban agriculture for production. As most perishable food products come from this agriculture in close proximity to population concentrations, we analysed from an agronomic point of view how market-garden farmers can meet this increasing urban demand. This work took place in the case of Mahajanga, a secondary city with high increasing demographic rate on the Northwest coast of Madagascar. Based on preliminary surveys to characterize the farming systems (on a sample of 91 farms), 11 market-garden farmers chosen in the three main agricultural zones of the urban area were surveyed during two years.

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Harvesting organic produce, Peru. Photo by Urban Harvest.

New Agriculturist reports

Written by Paul Osborn
New Agriculturist
Sept. 10, 2010

Excerpt:

In the last decade, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) have resurged in the North: in most European cities, waiting lists for allotments have grown, and city farms and school farms blossomed. However, most UPA still blends the frugal and the recreational, with a few financially viable urban farms getting by through the mutual benefits of employing special-needs patients in ‘care-farming’. However after a recent launch conference of the Greater Liverpool Food Alliance (GLFA) in north-west England, urban agriculture is being seen as a tool of resilience for crisis-hit Western economies.

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By 2030, half of Africa’s population will be urban

By Pay Drechsel and Stefan Dongus
In Environmental Science, Geography, Green Technologies, Social Science on September 21, 2010
Sustainability Science, Volume 5, Number 1, 2010, 69-78
Complete paper online.

“Urban agriculture can have many different expressions, varying from backyard gardening to poultry and livestock farming. This article focuses on crop production on larger open spaces in cities of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and investigates the sustainability and dynamics of this type of land use, which is common on undeveloped plots particularly in lowlands, such as in inland valleys, or along urban streams or drains. An adapted version of the Framework for Evaluating Sustainable Land Management (FESLM) developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was used to assess the sustainability of urban agriculture.

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Symposium international – Dakar, République du Sénégal, 5-9 décembre 2010

Afin d’aider les pays en développement à faire face aux défis de l’urbanisation massive et rapide, l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) a lancé en 2001 une initiative pluridisciplinaire, ‘Des aliments pour les villes’, visant à assurer l’accès des populations des villes à des denrées alimentaires et à un environnement sain et sans danger. L’un des principaux éléments de l’initiative est l’intensification de la production horticole dans les zones urbaines et périurbaines.

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New book on African urban agriculture

Gordon Prain, Diana Lee-Smith, Nancy Karanja
300 pages
Publisher: Springer
1st Edition. edition (August 24, 2010)

How much does urban agriculture help feed and support the billions of people living in the world’s towns and cities? How could it do this better? Crop cultivation and livestock- raising have long histories in urban Africa, as in other areas of the world, but broad awareness among researchers and policy makers of either the history or the contemporary facts of life in African urban development is much more recent. With a majority of the continent’s population expected to be classified as urban in about 20 years, and its urban population spending as much as 80 percent of their household budgets on food, this book seeks to answer the two timely questions above with practical proposals for technical interventions and policy support.

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