malawi urban agriculturetcdc2.undp.org/gssdacademy/sie/docs/vol20/new/1-malawi.pdf · malawi urban...

1Malawi Urban Agriculture

David D. Mkwambisi, PhD

GENERAL INFORMATION

Implementing Institution:Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR)

Head:Prof. George Kanyama Phiri, PhD

Details of Institution:Address: Bunda CollegeP. O. Box 219, Lilongwe, MalawiTel.: (+265) 888 552 400/1 277 440Fax: (+265) 1 277 364/361E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.luanar. bunda.unima.mw

Implementation Period: Case Study A: September 2004-December 2005Case Study B, Waste for Wealth: March 2010-December 2012

Costs and Explanation of Case Studies:For Case Study A, $20,000 was provided by the Interna-tional Development Research Council (IDRC) of Canada for a PhD field research programme that was under-taken between September 2004 and December 2005. In this period, the European Union Micro Project and the British High Commission Self-Help Fund supported two community-based case studies in Blantyre City and

27

Lilongwe City, respectively, in the amount of $10,000 for each city. In this phase, groups of women waste entrepreneurs were formed to manage solid waste from selected markets. Solid waste was composted and marketed to city residents and the private sector involved in landscaping.

Community-based Case Study B involved a project – Waste for Wealth – funded by UNDP with over $3 million and implemented in Lilongwe City from 2009 to 2012 through a public-private partnership. The Lilongwe City Council partnered with Bunda College of Agriculture of the University of Malawi, two non-governmental organizations (the Centre for Community Organization and Development and Sustainable Waste Management) and Four Seasons Nurseries Limited. The College provided training and conducted research on solid waste management alternatives, and the two NGOs were responsible for community mobilization and capacity development and for identifying the local community waste entrepreneurs, especially women’s groups, who would collect, sort and transfer solid waste. The women had no formal employment and would benefit from the sales of the compost. Four Seasons Nurseries Limited, a private company, purchased and marketed the compost while the City Council provided the required policy and regulatory direction. UN-Habitat also supported the project.

S U M M A R Y

Despite persistent economic growth around the world, food and social insecurity, unemployment and poor housing remain pressing problems in many parts of Africa, especially in and around the major urban centres. For example, urban statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimate that approximately 800 million people are unable to obtain an adequate and secure supply of food year round. In this context, urban agriculture offers the potential to address both socioeconomic and environmental problems by providing alternative-livelihood strategies that also create a potentially sustainable way of dealing with urban organic waste. Both the nature of the problems and the role of urban agriculture as a solution are common across all Africa, indeed much of the developing world. In this context, Malawi is typical. Thus, there was justification for carrying out this research in Mala-wi, a country that is leading internationally in urbanization rates caused by rural-ur-ban migration.

Urban poverty and environmental degradation are closely related problems that plague the developing world. Compounding these problems, tools developed to aid national and international development (such as rapid rural appraisal and sustainable livelihoods) are not directly relevant to urban areas. The academic research through Case Study A was undertaken to address this gap by proposing a framework through which urban agriculture can be used to tackle urban poverty and subsequent envi-

28 | VOLUME 20: SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES IN URBAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

ronmental problems. This empirical work gave rise to a conceptual framework (fig. 1) modelled on work by Parkes (Parkes 2003; Parkes et al., 2003) that defines the boundaries of the system (prism) and conceptualizes urban poverty as being a func-tion of social and ecosystem health as well as being influenced by socioeconomic and institutional forces. Urban agriculture has the potential to sit at the centre of this sys-tem and can, theoretically, be a tool whereby social and institutional forces can im-prove socioeconomic and environmental health. The second component is the three intersecting circles (a Venn diagram). These suggest that to target urban agricultural activities, it is necessary to analyse all aspects of the conceptual space defined by the prism. Specifically, this provides a way of framing the problems of urban poverty so that policymakers can conceptualize key development activities.

Figure 1. Venn-prism conceptual framework.

Researchers at the University of Malawi, in collaboration with experts from Leeds University in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, argued that urban agriculture based on the Venn-prism framework could create a link between the community and its ecosystem while at the same time reducing poverty (thus improving socioeconomic determinants) and potentially improving environmental determinants if it were officially recognized by institutions and undertaken to achieve sustainability (without exploiting or degrading the urban environment/ecology) at both the national

Socioeconomic healthEmployment, food security,

incomes, assets, better services

Institutional forcesPolicies, strategies,

organizations, funding Environmental healthBetter houses, clean air, natural resource mgmt.

Urban agriculture

Institutionalweakness

Environmentalproblems

Urbanpoverty

Poverty, food security, trust,social relations, urbanization

Socioeconomic forces

Malawi Urban Agriculture | 29

and community levels. For example, in Lilongwe, women are supported with financial resources to construct ecosanitation (ecosan) toilets to access humanure for food pro-duction. This has not only improved soil quality but it has also reduced water-borne related diseases, saved space for temporary toilets and improved community health and sanitation. At the institutional level, the City Council is able to engage non-governmen-tal organizations (NGOs) in disseminating awareness messages on waste management and urban food systems.

cent (539,000) in 1977 to 10.7 per cent (853,390) in 1987 to 14 per cent in 1998 (1,435,436), a level projected to increase to about 3.8 million in 2020.

In 2005, the Government of Malawi reported that about 25.5 per cent of the poor population lived in urban areas (cit-ies and municipalities), of whom 22.3 per cent were ultra poor. This urban poverty has several social implications including prostitution, child labour (fig. 2), insecu-rity and lack of basic amenities.

Figure 2. Children from poor communities engaged in paid work (groundnut shelling) in Lilongwe.

Rapid urbanization in Malawi is not associated with the commensurate eco-nomic growth and effective redistributive measures required to alleviate poverty. Instead, the result is increasing urban poverty whose most visible manifestation

B A C K G R O U N D A N D J U S T I F I C A T I O N

The scale and scope of urban agriculture were not well known owing to the lack of a conceptual framework and rigorous research. The understanding of urban agriculture was so limited that policy and programme design were often based on speculation. Owing to a lack of tools for understanding urban problems, Ma-lawians and indeed many other develop-ing countries do not know many details about who the urban farmers actually are, and this gap hinders the development of an appropriate policy to promote urban agriculture effectively.

Malawi is one of the most urban-ized countries in Africa. Its annual ur-banization rate of 6.3 per cent is three times the global rate and nearly twice the African rate of 3.5 per cent. A study conducted by the United Nations Cen-tre for Human Settlements (UNCHS, now UN-Habitat) indicated that Ma-lawi had emerged as the most rapidly urbanized country in the world, with 3 million people living in urban areas in 2005. According to Government figures, the urbanization rate rose from 6 per cent in 1966 (260,000 people) to 8 per


is the slums that continue to develop in and around cities. These settlements are characterized by poor access to physical infrastructure such as roads and electric-ity as well as to social services such as health, education, water and sanitation

and by insecure tenure and poor hous-ing conditions. This has resulted in high poverty rates and severe environmental problems such as inadequate waste dis-posal (fig. 3).

Figure 3. Poor waste dis-posal around a market in Lilongwe.

R E S E A R C H D E S I G N A N D M E T H O D S

The research relating to Case Study A was undertaken as part of a doctorate degree in environment and development at the University of Leeds, including a dissertation titled “Urban agriculture in Malawi: Poverty, waste management and institutional barriers” (Mkwambisi, 2008). It involved developing a concep-tual framework to promote understand-ing of urban poverty and environmental issues in developing countries. After developing data collection tools, in-formation was collected from different social groups in the two main Malawian cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe with the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

One local NGO, Africare-Malawi, and all members of the two City Assem-blies were involved in data collection on the characteristics of urban farmers, poverty rates, environmental problems, soil nutrient budgets and institutional constraints. When food security and waste management were identified as two main problems, case studies were implemented to involve women from poor communities in composting organ-ic waste as an income-generating activ-ity as well as a cheap source of fertilizer for urban agriculture. Fifteen groups were formed and legally constituted in accordance with the urban regulations. Bank accounts were opened for each group and training was provided cov-ering group dynamics, bookkeeping, waste collection, sorting, recycling and usage. Several training programmes were also organized to inform the re-

(Photo: David Mkwambisi)


source users of the significance of waste recycling and reuse for urban sustaina-bility (fig. 4). This training was provid-ed by volunteer students from Bunda College of Agriculture, a constituent college of the University of Malawi.

(Photo: David Mkwambisi)

Figure 4. Women being trained in how to make compost beds in Blantyre.

The research phase was divided among three objectives, each with its own methodology, which were integrat-ed through the Venn-prism conceptual framework (fig. 1). To assess the role of urban agriculture in reducing poverty, four data-collection activities were undertaken in different households. First, a large num-ber of questionnaires were administered at a range of sites to 330 urban farmers from various socioeconomic backgrounds and both genders. Second, focus groups with low-income residents provided an oppor-tunity to elaborate qualitatively on results from the questionnaire. Third, a commu-nity workshop was conducted for feed-back and, lastly, meetings with experts were held to provide additional insight into issues covered in the questionnaire and those discussed with communities.

The second phase tested the po-tential of urban agriculture to uptake

municipal solid waste using a partici-patory nutrient-budget analysis. This phase aimed to determine the extent to which urban agriculture may exacerbate/solve urban environmental problems. It was argued that urban agriculture has the potential to reduce environmental pollution and to promote more sus-tainable food security and nutrition. A nutrient-budget analysis was used to determine the soil nutrient balances of the major nutrients for 27 households and individual fields. It also included an assessment of the potential of local sources of municipal solid waste to act as a source of the nutrients required by urban agriculture.

The third phase involved inves-tigating how an institution can help or hinder urban agriculture in Malawi using an institutional analysis. Expert meetings were conducted with officials from NGOs, City Assemblies and re-searchers as well as urban development officials. A semi-structured checklist was used to:

• develop an understanding of the development policy framework within which organizations imple-ment activities;

• assess the type, amount and mode of support that the organizations give to poverty reduction and en-vironmental programmes in gener-

al;

• determine what limitations and constraints each organization might face when presented with


the idea of supporting urban agri-culture; and

• collect secondary data and infor-mation on the activities, location of support, type(s) of beneficiaries, proportion of financial support and limitations faced when each organization implemented its pro-grammes.

The results and findings from both the review of literature and field surveys were then presented at a stakeholders’ meeting for policy consideration.

P A R T N E R S H I P S A N D C A S E S T U D I E S

In Case Study A, the University of Ma-lawi researchers collaborated closely with Africare International (an NGO), the Blantyre and Lilongwe City Coun-cils and the University of Leeds. This partnership was mainly to address the-oretical issues developed as part of the PhD field work. After the PhD field study, the NGO was able to implement some of the findings for its development goals. Working with the partners and the targeted communities has promoted both vertical and horizontal partner-ships such that information can be used at both levels of authority. Horizontally, women are able to work with market vendors and market committees to collect, sort and transport waste for re-cycling. Vertically, women are able to obtain new information and techniques from a centre of higher education that

is also able to provide relevant data and information to NGOs, the City Council and the Ministry of Local Government for developing both short- and long-term development plans as well as data for monitoring interventions.

The joint supervision of the PhD work by the two universities (Leeds and Malawi), subsequently supported by a British Council Development Part-nerships in Higher Education project, has strengthened the partnership and encouraged the two universities to share experience and information. The poli-cymakers’ workshop further encouraged partnerships between different sectors at different levels for individuals in-volved in urban agriculture and the en-vironment. Throughout the fieldwork, collaborations were maintained with national agricultural research stations for both technical and facility support. The involvement of three major do-nors (the Department for International Development, the European Union and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, or UN-Habitat) has enabled UNDP Malawi to mobilize resources for a Malawi national urban forum. It has also brought university students to work closely with poor communities as part of their training. Case Study B, which involved the Waste for Wealth project, has also resulted in two female under-graduate students being among African women receiving the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development award in 2010 and 2011.

Case study B involved a three-year project (2009-2012) to promote waste management through urban farming.


Table 2. Responses for using humanure in crop production (as a percentage).

The project was implemented through a public-private partnership among the Bunda College of Agriculture of the University of Malawi, the Lilongwe City Council, the Centre for Community Or-ganization and Development, Sustainable Waste Management and Four Seasons Nursery Limited, supported by UNDP and UN-Habitat. In this partnership, the Bunda College of Agriculture of the University of Malawi was responsible for research, information management and training. The Lilongwe City Council pro-vided policy guidance. The two NGOs (the Centre for Community Organization

and Development and Sustainable Waste Management) were responsible for mo-bilizing women waste entrepreneurs and for working with communities to manage waste for composting. The role of Four Seasons Nurseries Limited was purchasing and marketing compost produced by the women’s groups.

Consultation with urban farmers re-vealed that products from ecosanitation (ecosan) toilets have several uses (table 1). Over 80 per cent of the urban farmers are using the manure for urban food pro-duction while 43 per cent are using the products to earn income.

Table 1. Trends in the use of ecosanitation products (as a percentage).

The results show that the integra-tion of waste management and urban agriculture further yields positive results at the household level. Table 2 shows results for the use of humanure. The

main crops on which these ecosanitation products were applied were maize, green vegetables, beans and tomatoes. It should be noted that explicit advantages of these products could be identified after a

TrendPerception of use of ecosanitation products for

Agriculture Sale ExchangeIncrease 86 43 19

Decrease 3 9 2

No change 5 22 39

Don't know 1 1 1

N/A 6 25 39

Reason for applying humanure

Crop type

Maize Green vegetables Flowers Beans Tomatoes

Supports proper growth and healthy yield

40 13 2 3 7

Helps to produce big leaves 36 23 7 3 3

Supports growth and high yield

4 6 1 1 2

N/A 20 58 90 93 88


good number of years of use. Therefore, the respondents’ perceptions in table 2 should be looked at keeping in mind the weakness that some respondents used the products for only a season and in combi-nation with inorganic fertilizers.

Urine was used mainly for maize production (32 per cent) and green veg-etable production (11 per cent). A small proportion of respondents used it for bean and tomato production.

R E P L I C A B I L I T Y

A field study as part of the academic re-search used a new, innovative and integrated framework that offers the potential to combine sustainable livelihoods and a nutrient-budget analysis to assess the sustainability of urban agriculture as a poverty reduction strategy in developing countries. It followed a farmer-oriented research model that uses simple, easy-to-follow methods throughout the research. The aim of the participatory method is to enable the resource user to identify and understand the problem so that the results can be easily accepted. The use of farm-er indicators of problems should enable technical and scientific methods to be simplified so that communities can easily identify degradation threats.

The results of both the field stud-ies and case studies that are part of Case Study A were incorporated into a new project called Waste for Wealth, promoting zero waste in Lilongwe. Women are now using both municipal solid waste and humanure to promote

food production and soil conservation. NGOs such as the Centre for Commu-nity Organization and Development and Sustainable Waste Management are involved. The approach of this initiative can be replicated on a local, national and international scale if funds are avail-able. The involvement of the private sector shows not only that solid waste can be marketed for cash but also that it can be a source of nutrients for farmers in rural and urban areas. The availability of waste in all major cities in Malawi as well as Africa shows that the concept can be easily replicated as long as or-ganic waste is available.

P O L I C Y I M P L I C A T I O N S

One implication of this research is that there needs to be a policy framework that recognizes urban poverty. This policy tool should put in place mechanisms to establish leadership structures that could be used to link local communities with those in control of resources. Establishing effective leadership structures would not only promote communication between the formal and informal social institutions but also enable aid and support to be channelled to those in need of livelihood strategies such as urban agriculture.

First, if policy goals were to maximize the amount of food that a city produces, then the Government could create incen-tives for these “elite” farmers to expand operations. This could involve subsidies to intensify agricultural production as well as the provision of extension and ag-


ronomic advice. This sort of strategy would likely help to make the (relative-ly) wealthy urban farmer commercially oriented and would provide the oppor-tunity for more locally produced food to enter the market in urban and rural Malawi. This strategy would have to go hand in hand with food marketing and distribution strategies to help to ensure that this extra food ended up with those who needed it the most.

The second policy strategy would be to focus on pro-poor poverty re-duction measures that target marginal producers who use urban agriculture as a source of income rather than as a sup-ply of food. In this case, policy would not necessarily emphasize increasing yields but rather would start with ca-pacity-building exercises among poorer urban farmers, specifically those led by women. This policy strategy should target women who, from an economic point of view, have shown that, given the necessary support, women can im-prove their cattle and poultry produc-tion.

Third, in terms of employment policy, the Government should consider introducing vocational training to im-prove the skills of the poor and women, specifically in terms of issues regarding high value-added activities such as the livestock industry, food marketing and post-harvest technologies. Training should not only empower the poor and women but also create more job oppor-tunities and improve product availability at the local level. This strategy could re-duce the need to import food products, thereby saving much-required foreign

exchange and increasing the availabil-ity of fresh and nutritious food at the household level.

Finally, the role of the private sector and communities in promoting urban agriculture, waste reduction, household incomes and creation of employment should be considered by developing countries. Deliberate provi-sion of incentives to the private sector and communities, especially women and youth, can help municipalities to re-duce several costs associated with waste management and reduce tremendously greenhouse gas emissions associated with poor waste management.

L E S S O N S L E A R N E D

Achievement of the goals of the project required the willingness and participa-tion of local communities, particularly women in low-income communities. The involvement of women from poor communities in the cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe proved to be an inexpen-sive and successful approach to reducing waste-management problems faced by the City Assemblies. Table 3 presents characteristics of high- and low-income urban farmers in Malawi.

First, there are the wealthy (and usually male) farmers who dominate agricultural activities and generate a moderate proportion of their income by selling produce from relatively large plots of land. These farmers, however, consume the majority of their crops themselves and tend to employ people


Table 3. Summary of key characteristics of high- and low-income groups of urban farmers in Malawi.

to help with a range of tasks including marketing whatever produce the family does not need. These farmers are more efficient in terms of yields (kg/ha). The second group of urban farmers is poorer, has much smaller plots and is often run by female-headed households.

It was also found that of the 15 city markets where the women were com-

posting solid waste for sale and use in urban farming, the financial costs asso-ciated with delivering waste to dumping sites were very greatly reduced. The number of workers employed by the city was also reduced since the women worked hand in hand with vendors to collect, sort and recycle the waste. By linking the women through a legally binding contract with one of the private

Characteristic High-income farmers Low-income farmers

Gender Usually male Usually female

Literacy and food productionLow levels of illiteracy, with high crop production

High levels of illiteracy, with low crop production

Plot size (ha) Approximately 0.27 Approximately 0.06

Reasons for urban agricultureMainly as a hobby and for personal consumption

As household insurance and for income

Urban agriculture sector supplying labour

Agricultural marketing Agricultural production

Labour supplied Mostly permanent and skilledMostly temporary and unskilled

Type of labour hiredMainly casual and unskilled in crop sector

Mainly skilled labour in livestock sector

Urban agriculture sector where labour was hired

Agricultural production Livestock production

Season supplying labour in urban agriculture

All year round All year round

Main constraints to urban agriculture

Lack of institutional support Agricultural land and inputs

Main livelihoods Mainly in formal employmentMainly in urban agriculture and informal income-generating businesses

Main average food crop yield/ha

1,364 kg/ha 357.17 kg/ha

Harvests (expressed as kg of cereal equivalent) per capita

306.93 kg/year per capita 92.31 kg/year per capita

Income per capita from urban agriculture

MK2,381.17 MK1,509.00


companies involved in horticulture, most of the women had readily available markets for their compost manure. This increased their household disposable incomes and improved the lives of their household members. The projects also increased their crop yield through the use of inexpensive plant nutrients.

The project was also successful because funding of the case studies by the European Union (Malawi) and the British High Commission (Malawi) was timely and local City Assemblies par-ticipated. It is expected that the newly launched urban forum will promote the case studies in urban Malawi. Currently, discussions are under way between the University of Malawi, city authorities and media houses to promote the ap-proach and replicate it in other urban centres.

The involvement of a local NGO to work on poverty and environmental issues was particularly important to the success of the project. The fact that urban residents are transitory and lack traditional leadership structures means that it is difficult for formal agencies, such as government departments, to develop meaningful urban agricultural policy. Similarly, the fact that there are more pressing urban issues than food se-curity means that informal organizations such as faith-based groups are unlikely to promote urban agriculture. Since for-mal institutions work within the national poverty-reduction framework that fo-cuses on rural poverty, there is minimal official support for urban-based activities and this means that few NGOs actually work at the local level in urban Malawi.

The fact that the plots of land used for urban agriculture are small, frag-mented and widely dispersed around the city means that the characteristics of urban agriculture itself are difficult for institutions to support. In Malawi, the lack of a clear urban policy focus means that local communities do not have the expected levels of NGO activity. It also means that livelihood strategies such as agriculture are not officially recognized, supported or even assisted through civil society. All these factors result in a sit-uation where the poor, including those undertaking agriculture for food insur-ance purposes, have no administrative channels through which to access sup-port such as agricultural inputs, technical information and markets for the sale of their products.

At the national level, government policies have failed to empower city authorities and communities through necessary laws and regulations to punish those involved in destroying the en-vironment. Policies and laws included in the environmental policy have not been backed by funding despite a great change in human demographic charac-teristics. Second, since national policies have failed to promote urban sustaina-bility, city authorities have failed to inte-grate urban agriculture as a tool to help in reducing waste problems. This has resulted in the wholesale delivery of im-portant plant nutrients to dumping sites. Third, strategies used to manage solid wastes have direct impact on soil deg-radation at the farm level and on food insecurity at the household level since important plant nutrients and organic


matter are not incorporated into food production.

The most significant problem is that wholesale removal of organic waste is directly linked to soil fertility prob-lems and food insecurity as cities lose essential plant nutrients to dumping sites and through indiscriminate disposal of waste. Other scholars have noted that soil nutrient reserves are being depleted because of continued nutrient mining without adequate replenishment and

that the consequent downward spiral of soil fertility has led to a corresponding decline in crop yields, food insecurity and environmental degradation.

The development part of the case study was a success, with more waste turned into manure for sale and crop use. For example, table 4 shows results on maize productivity in response to the application of various manures including ecosanitation manure (humanure).

Table 4. Yield comparison for organic manure and chemical fertilizer at Bunda College Farm (2011).

Treatmentno. Description Germination

(%)

Plant height

(cm)

Leaf width (cm)

Leaf length

(cm)

Yield (kg/ha)

1 Control (No fertilizer) 94 120 18 145 1,498

2Recommended rate for inorganic fertilizers

91 154 19 158 2,118

360 kgNha-1 (Ecosan manure applied a week before planting)

79 181 19 175 1,884


79 143 16 143 1,609


79 170 23 189 1,835

6(104 kgNha-1 (Ecosan manure applied a week before planting)

82 186 20 172 1,960

760 kgNha-1 (Ecosan manure applied during planting)

67 172 19 185 1,476


82 184 21 175 1,734


85 189 19 180 2,112


73 166 18 168 1,770

1160 kgNha-1 (30 kg of cattle manure and 30 kg of goat manure)

48 156 16 153 1,655

1275 kgNha-1 (37.5 kg of cattle manure and 37.5 kg of goat manure)

100 165 19 167 1,642

1390 kgNha-1 (45 kg of cattle manure and 45 kg of goat manure)

88 186 26 166 2,259

14104 kgN/ha-1 (52 kg of cattle manure and 52 kg of goat manure)

91 212 18 182 2,348


grammes. Other researchers have used a similar integrated socio-environmental assessment framework for urban agricul-ture studies and have utilized primary data for further research and reference. Communities are now using the findings by applying them in their daily ways of coping with their agronomic changes. They have been informed about how best to conserve the natural resources for better yields and about indicators of potential soil degradation problems. The findings have also assisted the land users to explore other means of improv-ing soil conditions that will include the use of municipal solid waste.

Currently, City Assemblies in Malawi are involving communities to recycle organic waste. The incomes of women involved in waste recycling have increased. However, while research can lead to conclusions about urban agricul-ture in general, results will be specific to conditions in Malawi. There is a need to expand the programme to other countries and compare the outcomes. If this innovation is fully recognized by the local authorities, the Government will reduce costs associated with waste management since the strategy does not involve high-investment technology and human capacity. The experience has also proved to be contributing directly to household food security and incomes, es-pecially among low-income households. In addition, this programme has resulted in improving the soil nutrient status and soil properties, especially organic matter. More organic waste will be diverted from dumping sites and used for food produc-tion as well as income-generation.

The results show that treatment 9 performed competitively with treatment 2, which was a government recommen-dation rate for inorganic fertilizers. This shows that farmers can meet their food entitlements by linking sanitation to urban food production. Figure 5 shows maize produced in Lilongwe using ecosanitation manure. Apart from rais-ing awareness about sanitation and ur-ban food production, such interventions act as demonstration plots for promot-ing urban agriculture, especially among poor communities.

Figure 5. Women waste entrepreneurs/urban farmers visiting a demonstration site as part of the awareness and capacity-building strat-egy.

I M P A C T

The research has added to the debate on urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Af-rica in general and for the first time has generated fresh data and information for Malawi. This has assisted the donor agencies working on poverty reduction programmes across the region to include urban centres in their development pro-


F U T U R E P L A N S

This case study has shown that in-volvement of communities and the private sector can address two pressing problems faced by cities in developing countries: food security and waste man-agement. Future plans are to officially register women waste entrepreneurs with city councils and provide the re-quired training such that they undertake waste recycling as an income-gener-ating activity that can create employ-ment and promote urban agriculture. A training centre will be established within the University that will not only provide waste management tools but also information on how urban waste management frameworks can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste management costs and promote moni-toring and evaluation of such interven-tions.

In addition, there is a need to de-sign a standard procedure for organic fertilizer use and guidelines for different crops in urban Malawi. This is because the work described earlier has revealed that the uptake of organic waste is lim-ited owing to its form, time of availa-bility and lack of technical information for agricultural use. Organic use has been restricted because wastes have not been analysed in detail and their plant nutrient content is not linked to plant requirements at the local level. Current organic manure lacks a detailed product description, presentation and technical information on rates, application meth-ods, timing and storage for the wider

market. The logic is that without such empirical evidence, it is unlikely that urban food security and environmental issues will ever be on the Malawi policy agenda. Based on publications coming from this work (Mkwambisi et al., 2011, 2012), strategies have been put in place to develop a short course on urban ag-riculture in the short term and to offer a full course on urban food production in the long term. There are also plans to publish more work on urban agriculture.

C a s e S t u d y P r e p a r e d b y :

David D. Mkwambisi, PhDAddress: Lilongwe University of Agri-culture and Natural ResourcesBunda CollegeFaculty of Environmental SciencesP. O. Box 219, Lilongwe, MalawiE-mail: [email protected]

Academic Supervisors

Andrew Dougill, University of Leeds E-mail: [email protected] Fraser, University of Guelph E-mail: [email protected]

R E F E R E N C E S

Mkwambisi, D.D. (2008). Urban agri-culture and food security in Lilongwe and Blantyre, Malawi. In Agriculture in Urban Planning: Generating Livelihoods and Food Security, M. Reedwood, ed.


London: Earthscan Publishing.

______ (2008). “Urban agriculture in Malawi: Poverty reduction, waste man-agement and institutional barriers”, PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, Unit-ed Kingdom.

Mkwambisi, D.D., E.D.G. Fraser and A.J. Dougill (2012). Urban agriculture and poverty reduction: Evaluating how food production in cities contributes to food security, employment and income in Malawi. Journal of International De-velopment, vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 181-203.

______ (2012). Urban agriculture, institutions and development. In De-velopment, the Environment and Food: Towards Agricultural Change?, P. Jac-quet, R. Pachauri and L. Tubiana, eds. New Delhi: The Energy and Resources Institute.

Parkes, M. (2003) Linking ecosystems and social systems for health and sus tainability. Public Health Lessons from the Taeri River Catchment Department of Public Health and Department of Ge ography, Dunedin, New Zealand, Uni versity of Otago.

Parkes, M., Panelli, R. and Weinstein, P. (2003). Converging paradigms for environmental health theory and prac-tice. Environmental Health Per spective, vol.111, No. 5, pp. 669-675.


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