1. The Institutional and Regional Context

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? These are the questions which this book sets out to answer, and this chapter provides a regional and historical background to the research reported in the book which attempts to answer those questions. Despite the long history of agricultural production in around urban settlements, in Africa as in other parts of the world, this activity has faced technical, institutional and policy constraints, which only recently are beginning to change. The chapter provides an account of the origins of these constraints and why overcoming them can make an important contribution to urban food security and poverty eradication. It locates the present study within a research agenda begun more than 20 years ago which aims to provide evidence of the role of agriculture in the livelihoods of urban and peri-urban households and the changing treatment of this agriculture by city governments.