Africa: The Urban horticulture

By African Bulletin on December 10, 2010

“Towns and cities in the world’s developing countries are growing on an unprecedented scale…It is estimated that 130 million urban residents in Africa and 230 million in Latin America engage in agriculture, mainly horticulture, to provide food for their families or to earn income from sales ”

More than half of the world population, 3.3 billion people, is living in urban areas with one billion in slums, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America. With the increasing global population, three billion more people will join the urban population by 2050.

This Rapid urbanisation is associated with high rates of poverty and unemployment, but also with higher child malnutrition rate, mostly in cities than in rural areas. Fruits and vegetables grown in pots, backyards, tires and on marginal lands are, for millions of people, source of vitamins and micronutrients. The FAO Deputy General Director, Mr. Traoré, declared that it is therefore an urgent need to integrate an urban and peri-urban horticulture and recognise its role in strategies for food security and nutrition. He also called on the municipal authorities to ensure that all proponents of urban horticulture should have access to natural resources they need, namely land and water. Thus, an International Symposium on Urban and peri-urban horticulture is held in Dakar. It is jointly organised by the FAO and the Government of Senegal. More than a hundred experts of urban horticulture from Africa and elsewhere are working on critical issues, including the marketing of vegetables grown in urban areas, the reprocessing of waste water for irrigation and food security. The FAO has been at the forefront in raising awareness of the multiple advantages of urban and sub-urban horticulture. Its “Green City Strategy” has helped a number of countries, including Senegal, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala and Bolivia, which have thus succeeded in improving their urban and sub-urban horticulture. Planners, land scape architectes, and decision makers should make urban horticulture an integral part of their development strategies and plan to meet the challenges of improving the nutrition and feeding a growing population in a rapidly urbanising world, the FAO Deputy General-Director said.    We must act today to ensure that urban and peri-urban horticulture find its place in a development policy that will be the greenest cities for their inhabitants, and synonymous with opportunity and hope.