Angelika Kessler

In: UA Magazine 9 - Financing Urban Agriculture

In West Africa's capital cities urban farms are not homogeneous. They differ in crops, cropping period, location, inputs, capital investments, profits and liquid assets. Different farming systems have specific economic strategies to which credits have to be adapted. In West African urban farms, we can distinguish four to five different crop production systems, which differ by type of farm, products, location (in city or periurban area), economic strategy, and profitability. In this article, the following systems are distinguished: mixed vegetable farms, irrigated with watering cans; mixed vegetable farms using pumps; women's traditional vegetable farms; ornamental plant cultivation; and staple-food farms.Interviews were conducted in Lomé, Cotonou, Bamako, Dakar, Ouagadougou and Conakry in 1999 and 2002, as part of a European Union financed INCO project for development called "The use of organic composted waste from urban households for phytosanitary purposes in periurban agriculture of West Africa". Furthermore, IWMI-FAO West Africa, financed City Resource Papers on Urban Agriculture. Based on these interviews, annual (Lome and Cotonou) or seasonal (Bamako and Ouagadougou) benefit of the farms were calculated, taking into account input costs, salaries, maintenance and depreciation.