How abundant is Africa’s urban harvest, how much does it help feed and support
the 250 million people now living in the continent’s towns and cities? And how
could it do this better? Crop cultivation and livestock raising have long histories in
urban Africa, as in other urban areas of the world (Mumford 1961; Southall 1998),
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.
This book, which is a continuation of a research agenda on African urban agriculture
begun more than 20 years ago, seeks to answer the two questions above with
evidence and practical proposals for technical interventions and policy support.
The need to emphasize both technology and policy support for urban agriculture
is a consequence of two other histories, of agricultural research on the one hand,
and of urban institutions and policy in Africa on the other. With limited exceptions,
urban agriculture has until recently been marginalized, ignored or proscribed
in these histories. Before moving to a discussion of the urban agriculture research
agenda in Africa and the contribution of this volume, it is important to at least touch
on those two histories to help understand why the agenda has taken the form that
it has.