Food Resilience and Urban Gardener Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Can We Learn from the Experience of the Cape Flats in Cape Town,South Africa?

Abstract

This paper draws on the results of a mixed-methods study that investigates whether urban gardener networks in a low-income neighbourhood in Cape Town are contributing to urban agriculture and food resilience. The findings reveal that the urban gardeners are organised into largely fragmented informal networks whose primary goal is to enhance food resilience. While these networks have succeeded in disseminating information, they have not been able to empower urban gardeners in low-income neighbourhoods to access resources beyond non-governmental organisation assistance. Also, the home gardeners have not succeeded to reorganise, both in terms of form and function, in order to overcome the underlying stress factors, such as poverty, that continue to weaken home gardens in the Cape Flats area. We argue that engagement with urban gardener networks can be a useful way of framing the debate on food resilience in low-income areas of African cities.