Promoting a dynamic approach for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa

This presentation focuses on results obtained from the international workshop "Agricultures et développement urbain en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre" [Types of urban agriculture and development in Central and West Africa] hosted in Yaoundé in 2005 in Cameroon. The main partners in this workshop were Senegal, Benin and Cameroon, with the participation of several other countries from sub-Saharan Africa. Four main topics were investigated: urbanization and governance; urbanization and city supplies; urbanization and the environment; and urbanization and sanitary issues. Several main areas of research emerged, among which: 1) How can areas in cities for which it is impossible to obtain building permits be rezoned and promoted for agriculture?; 2) How can the marketed surplus from urban and peri-urban areas be promoted?; and 3) How can agrochemical inputs be better monitored? Among the participants at the workshop there was consensus on the highly heterogeneous situations confronted by urban and peri-urban agriculture. There was also consensus for a wide variety of policies to implement or pursue in order to improve livelihoods and environmental standards for urban and peri-urban agriculture (training, reliable data, etc.). Today, however, despite some case studies, there is still a lack of systematic research concerning institutional urban-rural interconnections. Moreover, little research has focused on the very nature of the currently ongoing transition between the rural and urban worlds. From a transition perspective, future research could thus begin to study the dynamics of agricultural practices; the migration of people in or out of agriculture; or the question of whether or not to adopt intensive systems. In this sense, a complementary area for research from a transition perspective would be the study of substitution factor between inputs (labour, technology, land, credit): for example, the economic and agronomic consequences that would result from recycling municipal solid wastes instead of using agrochemical inputs. (Résumé d'auteur