Urban agriculture promotes sustainable livelihoods in
Cape Town

ABSTRACT

Urban agriculture has long been endorsed as a means to promote food security and economic wellbeing in African cities. However, the South African context presents mixed results. In order to establish the contributions of urban agriculture to sustainable livelihoods, the sustainable livelihoods framework is applied to a case study on cultivators from Cape Town’s Cape Flats. This study contributes to the empirical literature on urban agriculture by providing a deeper understanding of the benefits cultivators themselves attribute to urban agriculture. The key finding is that cultivators use urban agriculture in highly complex ways to build sustainable livelihoods. NGOs are central to this process. Distrust, crime and a lack of resources are, however, limiting factors. The paper concludes with policy recommendations to support pro-poor urban agriculture in African urban centres.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban agriculture
• sustainable livelihoods
• resilience
• NGOs
• Cape Town

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Abalimi, Inity, Soil for Life and the Sozo Foundation, along with the cultivators affiliated with them, for the time and insights they gave to this research. This research was supported by a grant from Stellenbosch University’s Hope Project, through the Food Security Initiative. I would also like to thank the Africa Climate Change Adaptation Initiative (ACCAI) Network and the Open Society Foundation for supporting his fellowship at the Global Change Institute.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

David W Olivier http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6037-9150

Notes

1 Three age ranges are used: ≥18 (18 to 39), ≥40 (40 to 64) and ≥65.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based upon research supported by the National Research Foundation [grant number 78647]. Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and therefore the NRF do not accept any liability in regard thereto.