Food Security & Urban Agriculture in sub-Saharan Cities

Sustaining (peri-)urban agriculture in rapidly urbanising cities

By Kai Feberwee, supervised by Edo Abraham

Since the 1960’s the population of the world has more than doubled and an increasingly large number of these people are living in urban areas. Fifteen years ago, the 50% mark was crossed. There are now more people on the world living in cities then there are in rural areas. In sub-Saharan Africa in particular, projections of urban growth show massive increases.

 Figure 1. Evolution of urban sprawl in Kumasi

As a consequence of this urban sprawl, agricultural activities in peri-urban fringes suffer. In Kumasi for example, vegetative cover has decreased from 48% to 9% between 1986 and 2016. This farmland shrinkage not only endangers the livelihoods of peri-urban farmers, but also threatens the food security of the city. As an important source of fresh vegetables and fruits, (peri-)urban agriculture plays a crucial role in guaranteeing sufficient and diverse food for cities like Kumasi.

Because of this there is a large interest in understanding how (peri-)urban farmers can adapt to urban sprawl and how food security in the city can be guaranteed. Our goal of the research is to identify adaptation strategies in urban agriculture and to quantify how these strategies contribute to food security and livelihoods in the city. There is a special interest in the use of wastewater for irrigation in urban agriculture, as this is a widely applied concept in Kumasi. As such, this will receive extra attention in the research.