The Universities of Kassel, Göttingen, Freiburg and Ruhruni Bochum have announced an exciting new research program called “Urban Food Plus”, which explores the opportunities of (peri-)urban farming to address food insecurity:
African food security not only depends on productivity increases in marginal rural areas, but increasingly also on a more efficient use of niche environments such as (peri-)urban zones, where innovations are more easily adopted due to close market linkages between producers and consumers.
Across different climatic zones urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) covers 5% to 36% of an African city’s total food supply and up to 90% of its fresh vegetable consumption. However, little is known about how to overcome problems in resource use efficiencies, negative externalities, and UPA-related income effects on gender or different population groups.
The multi-disciplinary UrbanFoodPlus network of German, African, and international scientists, private sector representatives, and stakeholders aims at developing site-specific, farmer-tailored innovations for improved agricultural production, food safety, and value chains in four major West African cities (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Tamale, Ghana; Bamako, Mali and Bamenda, Cameroon).
On-farm experiments, workshops, and policy dialogues involving stakeholders at different levels aim at detecting bottlenecks in UPA production and marketing chains, and identifying and test-implementing options to overcome them. An International Graduate School combining research and teaching capacity at African and German universities will enhance scientific capacity building and knowledge transfer.
There are several openings for ph.D. and postdoc positions available at the project website.