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Brief report on the Anglophone Africa Training Course
First
of all, Urban Harvest would like to applaud and
extend a hearty thanks to all the co-organizers* and
participants
of the first Anglophone Africa Regional Training
Course on Urban Agriculture (UA) for their
enthusiastic participation in the development and
implementation of the course.
Spanning
three weeks in March 2004, the course allowed seven
city-teams from Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Cameroon and
South-Africa to share experiences, discuss and
evaluate together proposals for action-research in
UA. A novel aspect of the course was that each city
team comprised one stakeholder each from
agricultural research; policy and;
project/program implementation, thus allowing for an
integrated plan/proposal development. The presence
of participants and moderators from various
backgrounds and disciplines contributed to a rich
course-content and sharing of diverse visions and
experiences, which contributed to debates and
reflection on various holistic dimensions of UA.
Through
a series of 7 interactive learning modules and
training packages different themes and methodologies
were discussed to work out participatory R&D
strategies for UA. The
training course was experimental and innovative in:
a)
its regional focus, sharing actual
experiences, building case studies from different
cities, and setting the basis for regional
knowledge and resource networks;
b) the development of a new course curriculum for
integrated and sustainable UA in terms of new
concepts, dimensions of and methodological
approaches to UA. Themes and methods addressed
included the dimension of health risk assessment and
mitigation strategies, gender analysis, integration
of UA into land use planning and municipal policies,
and various technologies for waste and waste-water
recycling.
c) To promote broader dissemination of course
activities and results and promote distance
learning, all materials will be incorporated into an
interactive CD ROM.
d) A strategy of teaching-learning was used to help city
teams develop their city projects - a means of
ensuring follow-up to the course and integrating
theory into practice and local reality. Examples of
such city projects were implementation of a
base-line study on UA to guide further action
planning, the development and upscaling of
composting projects, and the development of an urban
agroforestry project. These projects reviewed by a
committee of experts, and three of them - submitted
by the city teams from Bamenda/Cameroon, Kumasi/Ghana,
and Kisumu/Kenya - were selected to receive
IDRC
seed funding for starting up implementation.
Congratulations to them on their success and best of
luck with their projects !
To
give formal recognition to their intentions
participating city teams signed the "Nairobi
Declaration on UA" - expressing their
interest to form part of a regional UA network open
to all interested, and to contributing to further
development of UA in the region through support of (peri)urban
farmers and their organizations.
View
some pictures
of the course activities here
For
further information please contact:
Diana
Lee-Smith, Course Coordinator and Urban Harvest
coordinator for SSA
*
co-organizers of the course were:
IDRC-Cities Feeding
People program
Municipal Development Program
International
Water Management Institute
UN-Habitat Urban Management Program
Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Forestry
Government of Kenya, and other regional and local
partners
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