The premise of this chapter is that urban agriculture (UA), though widespread, lacks
an adequate institutional response. The study presented is based on empirical surveys
carried out in 2002–2003, but it is also an urban history, presenting a rich
description coming from 20 years of documentary research on Yaoundé by the lead
author. We also went back to examine and make a critique of the way the Yaoundé
Structure Plan of 1981 was put together and, in doing so, engaged the collaboration
of representatives of a variety of institutions involved with UA. Our basic question
throughout has been to what extent the reality of UA has found expression in institutions.
The study was one of those executed by the inter-disciplinary team mentioned
in Chapter 3, who presented their findings collectively at the Town Hall exhibition
and public meeting in Yaoundé in early 2004. This meeting again brought together
the main stakeholders involved in UA, as a way of moving forward the agenda of
institutional development.
UA is at once a form of land-use, an economic sub-sector of agriculture and an
expression of the multiple ways in which the urban and rural worlds intersect – a
characteristic of many African capital cities. The practice of agriculture is intrinsic
to Yaoundé, a town created by people of largely rural origin and the capital of a
country where agriculture is the main activity of 70 percent of the population. The
town has been in a process of rapid ongoing expansion at its periphery for about a
century, as touched upon in Chapter 3, above.
Institutionally, the resulting town is a haphazard entity imposed on people who
find themselves there due to the vagaries of history. It remains to be re-created as
a modern African urban entity, with a citizenry that identifies itself with the place.
This is essentially a task of institution building, much needed not only by the people
living there but also in order to develop a really workable and recognizable
African city for the 21st century (Bopda 1997). We use the term institution to alsoencompass organizations – the former meaning social norms and practices established
over time and the latter meaning intentional formal structures created for a
specific outcome. As we shall see, there is a problematic disconnection between
both organizations and institutions of a formal nature and the norms and practices
of many citizens, especially with regard to urban agriculture. Urban agriculture is
but one aspect of the gradual transformation of African towns from rural to urban,
and provides a useful way of examining the process of modern institution building
in that it manifests many of the conflicts that arise over access to the natural and
human-made environments of cities.
In order to study this transformation from rural to urban and the opportunities
provided for building institutions, the complexity of human interaction with
the environment involving UA must be examined. Agriculture taking place in and
around urban areas must be understood in the interests of improved agricultural
development in general. As the previous two chapters have shown, UA is not a
deviant part of agriculture to be tolerated, but an intrinsic part of the sector’s growth.
As described in Chapter 3, agriculture has been going on in Yaoundé since it
began. The military station hired workers who were also farmers and the German
settlement remained self-sufficient in food as a result. Since then urban agriculture
has played hide-and-seek with urban management for a century, growing dramatically
in the 1980s, when the economic crisis followed by Structural Adjustment
Policies slowed down rural agriculture, reduced public sector employment and
increased urban unemployment. The informal sector – previously considered evidence
of failure and fought by officialdom with often bloody confrontation – was
suddenly regarded as having the right to exist and urban agriculture was seen as part
of it. It was viewed by the authorities as a means of survival as well as a source
of income and social stability, while for the population it was just a spontaneous
activity, part of tradition, even quasi-religious or at least an unquestioned aspect
of everyday life. In this chapter we shall examine this historical evolution in much
more detail using a variety of data sources.
Our major concern in this chapter is to critically examine the institutions that
emerge from this history and their actual and potential relationship to urban agriculture.
Currently, UA only appears in plans as “green space”, while an attitude
of tolerance or complicity exists between farmers and the authorities. In order to
engage with UA as a sector as opposed to just tolerating it, there have to be economic,
land, health and environmental policies that recognize its existence and links
with many other sectors. Yet it is a real problem to integrate a phenomenon that
evolves rapidly as the town develops. Since UA does not stay still it is hard to see
how it can be regulated so as to protect the interests of all concerned.
Another difficulty is the current administration of Yaoundé – the four levels of
hierarchy, including chiefdoms, are neither integral to, nor coherent with, the totality
of the town. The division of Mfoundi into six sub-prefectures corresponding to
six communes is neither an optimal way of connecting the administration with the
population, nor an effective form of decentralization. This type of decentralization
does not help integrate public services at local and central level in a town that is
both a regional and national centre.