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Urban agriculture (UA) has recently received increasing attention in both scholarly and policy cycles as a potential tool for poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper focuses on urban crop cultivation (UCC) and examines men’s and women’s motives and needs in UCC, the (perceived) contribution of UCC to household livelihoods, and the benefits men and women derive from it. Although the contribution of UCC to overall household food and incomes appeared to be modest, for the majority of farming households such benefits were nonetheless greatly valued and bore varied and important meanings for men and women. The paper also examines the implications of recent national UA policy responses in Kenya for urban development and household livelihoods, and for equitable distribution of UA’s benefits for men and women.

This paper deals with the gender aspects of urban livestock keeping in Eldoret, Kenya. It shows that men and women play different but complementary roles in livestock keeping. Men show greater preference for and are more involved – in terms of decision-making and responsibility taking – with large livestock and where income is the primary motive for livestock keeping, and perform tasks of an outdoor nature and/or which require considerable technical knowledge. On the other hand, women prefer and exercise greater control over small livestock, make the most decisions about consumption use of livestock products, and perform home-based routine tasks. However, there are instances where men and women cross gender boundaries, for instance where labour of the opposite gender is absent in the household, or as a strategy to control benefits accruing to the livestock. In terms of livelihood outcomes, women's role in livestock keeping is geared more towards improving household nutritional and food security status, while men's role is motivated more by personal benefits.

This article highlights the labour contributions of men and women in urban crop cultivation in Eldoret, Kenya. Divisions of labour in urban gardening were mediated by social constructs of masculinity and femininity, gender differentials in entitlements and farming knowledge and intra-household power relations. The resulting labour distribution patterns manifested itself in the type of crops men and women took responsibility for, the specific agricultural tasks they performed and the spatial segregation of men's and women's activities and tasks. Traditional gender-related labour boundaries were also challenged and reworked. With regard to livelihood outcomes, women's labour contributed more directly to household food security, although men were increasingly getting involved in subsistence farming, which held prospects for improved productivity and therefore enhanced household food security.

This paper argues that urban agriculture can be transformed from its present underdeveloped status to a thriving sector in African towns, thus contributing to employment creation, income generation and the provision of food. Using three examples from East Africa (Nakuru, Morogoro and Mbeya), first, the present situation is described from a town’s perspective, thereby focusing on resource allocation (land and water), the sector’s benefits (food, income and employment) as well as its challenges (environment). Second, the question is raised how urban agriculture can be turned into a thriving economic sector, whereby three major themes are dealt with: the creation of a favourable legal and policy setting, the provision of support and education, and the improvement of market conditions. It is concluded that both the government and the private sector can and should take the lead, be it in different spheres. Key words: Urban development, urban agriculture, urban environment, East Africa.

At a time of economic crisis and sharply rising food prices, urban farming is increasingly helping to sustain households. Gender is generally thought to be a key variable in this but studies are still in their infancy. Looking at the phenomenon from a livelihood perspective and based on a survey carried out in Buea, Cameroon, this paper deals with a number of key issues related to gender and urban gardening, including access to resources, division of labour and the benefits and challenges encountered. An additional variable, namely the marital status of the gardener, is also considered. There appear to be important differences between male and female gardeners in various respects, and marital status plays a role not only among female gardeners but to some extent among male gardeners too.

Farming among urban dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa is a common phenomenon. The present study, carried out in a medium-sized town in Kenya, not only confirmed this but also showed that farming by urban dwellers in the rural areas was even more important for these households’ livelihoods than farming in town. However, those who could benefit most from farming, i.e. the urban poor, appeared to be underrepresented among urban farming households and those urban poor who did farm, either in urban or in rural areas, performed worse than the farming non-poor. The importance of farming as a livelihood source is illustrated by the fact that in years with very little or no harvest due to drought, many of the poor farming households faced food shortages.

Farming in town, be it livestock or crop production, is often considered detrimental to the urban environment. Less well known are the beneficial effects of farming for the urban environment. Both the positive and negative effects have been poorly researched. This paper deals with urban horticulture in Cotonou (Benin) and focuses on the role this sector plays in relation to two urban environmental aspects, namely solid waste and liquid waste. The sector was found to be currently contributing to a better environment in various ways and, potentially, the benefits could be even greater.

This study examined whether street food vendors sell a sufficient variety of foods for a healthful diet. It was hypothesized that vendors sold only low-cost food groups to enable the buyer to afford the food while the vendor also made a profit. A structured questionnaire was administered to 580 vendors in three selected locations. Data included product names, ingredients, methods of preparation, and the sex of the vendor. A little more than half of the vendors (53%) sold food of only one group; 44% sold cereals. Overall, 36% of vendors, mostly men, sold only carbohydrate products. the percentage of vendors selling foods of more than one group was higher in the working area (53%) than in the slum area (43%, p < .05), and it was higher in both of these areas taken together than in the lower-middle income area (21%, p < .001). Micronutrient and mixed-nutrient products were associated with female vendors. Although a slight majority of all street vendors sell foods of only one group, women vendors are capable of supplying a sufficient variety of food groups that consumers can afford. It appears that consumer purchasing power dictates the food groups provided by vendors, especially cereal-based-foods. A policy on micronutrient fortification of cereal flours and fats used in popular street food preparation needs to be considered. This could be coupled with consumer and vendor education programs focusing on the importance of healthful diets.

This volume attempts to dig deeper into what is currently happening in Africa's agricultural and rural sector and to convince policymakers and others that it is important to look at the current African rural dynamics in ways that connect metropolitan demands for food with value chain improvements and agro-food cluster innovations. It is essential to go beyond a 'development bureaucracy' and a state-based approach to rural transformation, such as the one that often dominates policy debate in African government circles, organizations like the African Union and the UN, and donor agencies.

According to Prince Claus's own convictions, it is important to make a distinction between the notions of development and equity in order to arrive at a full understanding of the conflation of both words. Development is usually considered as an intentional acceleration of modernization, consisting of transitions of the economy, the state and the political system, as well as society. Explicit attention to equity brings to the fore that development is often a process with winners and losers, those included and excluded from the process itself and the gains from it and who are hidden behind average targets and average results. Equity highlights fairness and social justice. An important contribution to the equity debate was made by Leventhal. He observed that the way in which any social system deals with questions of allocating resources, punishments and rewards has a great impact on the satisfaction of its members. Keywords: economics equity; Lustrum Conference; Prince Claus

Objectives: To examine the frequency of street food consumption of people living in low-income settlements in Nairobi and the role of street foods in their daily diet and to reveal why people consume street foods rather than home-prepared foods. Setting, subjects and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was done with 1011 households and in-depth interviews with a subsample of 73 households in two selected areas in Nairobi: Korogocho, a low-income slum area and Dandora, a low–middle-income area. Results: The frequency of street food consumption was higher in Korogocho than in Dandora (3.6 vs 2.0 days per week; P

In some areas in sub-Saharan Africa a rural proletariat has emerged, consisting mainly of labourers living and working on plantations and large mixed farms. Besides these fully proletarianized estate workers, there is also a category of workers that can be labelled 'semi-proletarianized'. They live outside the agricultural estates, perform seasonal agricultural wage labour and still have control over some means of (re)production, usually a small piece of land. Based on a survey of large farms and households conducted in 1989 in Kenya's Trans Nzoia District, the present authors investigate whether differences in the degree of proletarianization of workers are reflected in differences in socioeconomic situation and living conditions (such as access to a latrine and improved drinking water, the number of household members per room, level of food consumption, nutritional condition). They also compare the situation of labourers with that of a group of non-labourers (households in which nobody had performed any agricultural wage labour in the year preceding the survey). They conclude that in terms of land and income as well as living conditions, labourers are disadvantaged when compared with non-labourers. With respect to the labourers, a higher degree of proletarianization coincides with a lower level of income but not necessarily with poorer living conditions.

Coast Province is the third area of population concentration in Kenya with more than 1.8 million people at the time of the census in 1989. The region is economically underdeveloped relative to central and western Kenya. In response to a great demand for land, the government of Kenya has since 1963 parcelled out tracts of land in Coast Province among smallholder tenants. This paper reviews the settlement of land in the province during 1960-70 and the effects upon later household income, food production, and nutrition. Findings are based upon information gathered from 300 tenant households surveyed between August 1985 and September 1986 in the Ukunda, Mtwapa, and Roka-East schemes respectively established in 1962, 1968, and 1969, and 150 households in rural comparison locations visited during the same period. In all aspects studied, including living conditions, household resources and income, food self-sufficiency and consumption, and nutritional status of children, the settlement tenants were better off than the rural population. Further analysis determined that the relatively better nutritional status of tenant households is only partly due to increases in food production and agricultural income. Income from employment was also higher than that of the rural comparison population. Households with large farms generally realized larger incomes, but they also had much larger families and food consumption, and the nutritional status of young children was lower among those households.

Water services in urban Africa are generally in a bad state and low-income neighbourhoods are not usually connected to the municipal water supply and infrastructure. The Kenyan government attempted to address these problems with its Water Act of 2002 and by creating water and sewerage companies. This chapter recounts how this idea was adopted and transformed by people in the Wandiege neighbourhood of Kisumu town who improved their local water and sanitation situation by setting up their own water supply system in an innovative way. It finally describes how this innovation was transformed in one low-income neighbourhood in Kisumu in two major steps: (i) by creating a local water supply system that was developed, constructed and managed by the community itself; and (ii) by transforming this project into an officially registered water and sewerage company at neighbourhood level. Keywords: Kenyan government; Kisumu town; sewerage company; Wandiege neighbourhood; Water Act of 2002; water company; water-sector reforms

This chapter provides an overview of national and Eldoret Municipal Council (EMC) laws and policies related to Urban Agriculture (UA) and considers how they have shaped the context in which urban farmers in Eldoret town are striving to make a living. It reflects on recent developments towards a more facilitative and supportive policy framework for UA at national level and the implications for the practice not only in Eldoret but also in other urban centres in Kenya. The chapter highlights different policies and legislation at macro and micro levels and its interaction, and assesses how they have responded to and shaped the development of UA as a livelihood strategy for urban dwellers in Eldoret town. Finally, the chapter offers some policy recommendations. Keywords:eldoret municipal council (EMC); Kenya; urban agriculture (UA); urban farmers

Thinking about development in Africa requires an appreciation of at least two sets of ideas. It is not sufficient to stress the ubiquity of failure, malnutrition, disease, predatory states and war; one also has to recognize that important aspects of the lives of millions of ordinary people have been transformed over the last five decades. All contributions in this book give insight into the heterogeneity of poverty and development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa, and confront the ideas, concepts and assumptions that lie behind pro-poor policies with their empirical findings.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the extent to which urban policy and the practice of urban agriculture by the poor are related. More specific questions include: (1) To what extent are the urban poor practising urban agriculture? (2) If they do, how do they perform compared to the non-poor who engage in this practice? (3) What influence does the legal and policy context have on the possibilities for the poor to perform urban agriculture? (4) To what extent can the urban poor benefit from policy measures? The results presented in the chapter are based on two studies, one in Nakuru Municipality in Kenya and the other in Morogoro and Mbeya Municipalities in Tanzania. The legal and policy setting in these towns is not only confusing but also such that the poor do not generally benefit from policy measures, if indeed policies exist at all. Keywords: Mbeya municipality; Morogoro municipality; Nakuru municipality; urban agriculture; urban policy; urban poor