Overview of the project

Context

Kpalimé is a city with more than 70,000 inhabitants and seven rivers whose predominant socio-economic activities are handicrafts and agriculture, such as urban market gardening, and vegetable and other food crop production. The presence of waterways in the urban environment serve as a potential lever for market gardening areas; riverbanks are used as plots for cultivation as the accessibility of water helps to solve irrigation issues, even for food crops such as corn, cowpea (beans) and fonio. Ninety percent of this agricultural activity is performed by women.

Due to exacerbated urbanisation these cultivation areas and habitats are threatened. The adjacent forests that protect these riverbanks are being destroyed, leaving room for certain invasive grass species. As a consequence, management of these exploited agricultural areas is not controlled. In addition to the invasion of weeds, the silting up and eutrophication of waterways is making it difficult for market gardeners to work due to lack of water.

Reduction of the market gardening areas is negatively affecting women’s socio-economic activities, women are idle and economically vulnerable. Endogenous urban markets are experiencing a slowdown in the supply of vegetables and food production is declining. Social cohesion around urban agriculture, the virtue of participatory and community mutual aid, is lost to the detriment of individualism and the fragmentation of agricultural and market gardening activity.

At the environmental level, women and farmers must resort to using phytosanitary products (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, pesticides, etc.). Crop treatment does not comply with any regulations since technical support or advice from sworn agricultural bodies or institutes is not received. Once the crops have been treated, they are returned to the local market for consumption. Even the soil loses its fertilizer tenure, becoming resistant to chemical fertilizers.

Justification

In order to provide solutions to guarantee the local population’s food security through agriculture, AVES (Association des Volontaires pour l’Environnement Sain / Association of Volunteers for a Healthy Environment) has initiated a project to support women, market gardeners and small urban farmers in restoring riverbanks by introducing agricultural methods and techniques best suited to their production. By doing so, market gardeners and farmers can optimise production maintaining the value chain in the local market; thus regaining their former income-generating activities. Impoverishment is reduced creating a balance in the social life of the community.

Strategy

In order to establish the project’s activities, AVES has centered its methodology around the following strategy:

• Study the profitability of urban agriculture;
• Support, advise and raise awareness among the population;
• Train actors; and
• Implement community actions.

Activities

The project’s activities are as follows:

• Information and awareness-raising among stakeholders on the preservation of biodiversity;
• Data collection from women and urban farmers on the profitability of their activity;
• Provide training on agro-ecological practices;
• Support and advise on adaptation to climate change effects;
• Establishment of plant nurseries for the riverbank restoration;
• Reforestation of riverbanks for the conservation of adjacent forests;
• Organise women and market gardeners into a production cooperative; and
• Establishment of an insurance company for mutual assistance of women and farmers.