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Land that was once considered wasteland – small plots of land beside roads, rivers or between houses – has now become the new food baskets of cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, thanks to an FAO project that shows how urban and peri-urban horticulture can have a profoundly positive impact on the country’s food security. Many of the thousands of gardeners participating in FAO’s Growing Green Cities project in five cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo were once considered “illegal residents” who used land that was not theirs to grow vegetables for their families. But over the past decade, FAO’s expanding support has helped them legalize their activities and improve their farming techniques. Not only have participants improved their family nutrition, they are also earning money by selling their surplus crops at local markets. They are also supplying city supermarkets, restaurants and hotels. In the capital, Kinshasa alone, they produce between 80,000 and 100,000 tonnes of vegetables each year from gardens in and around the city.
Political unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1990s and early 2000s has greatly exacerbated the country’s current urban problems. The country’s cities have had to cope not only with their own population growth, but also with housing millions of migrants from rural areas and refugees from the war-torn eastern provinces. The population of the capital, Kinshasa, grew from 3.5 million in 1990 to nearly 9 million in 2011. By 2025, that number is expected to exceed 12 million. Rapid urbanization is affecting all of Africa, with crowded cities unable to meet the needs of the urban poor, who have no access to land and no means to produce their own food. The few who have managed to start gardens and grow vegetables on unused land in and around cities are often considered squatters because they are using the land illegally. Yet, for many, it is their only way to get food.
Legal access to land and water
FAO launched the Growing Green Cities project in Kinshasa in 2000, initially working with municipal authorities to help the city’s approximately 5,000 gardeners gain access to land. Many operated on vacant land without permits. Even officially recognised growers’ cooperatives did not have legal title to the land they farmed. The project also installed irrigation and drainage facilities to ensure the supply of clean water. This avoids the use of wastewater (such as liquid waste discarded by households or businesses) or water from polluted streams that could contaminate produce.
Project reserves nutritious food basket
All this adds up to an extremely positive picture. Today, 70% of the leafy vegetables consumed in Kinshasa are grown in gardens in and around the city. Not only has the project contributed to the national food basket by supplying local markets with healthy vegetables and fruits that provide nutritional benefits, it has also encouraged individual farmers and associations to develop niche markets. As a result, they now supply urban restaurants, hotels and supermarkets with safe and high-quality fruits such as papayas, mangoes, pineapples and vegetables. A farmers’ association in a neighbouring municipality has even gone beyond the initial project plans and purchased high-quality potato planting material, which it now “exports” to Kinshasa. The capital, which used to rely on potatoes flown in from East Kivu or imported from other countries, now receives them from Mbanza-Ngongu, 150 km away, which reduces transportation costs and, therefore, the cost of the potatoes. Building green cities in the DRC has proven to be an entry point to improving the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people living in DRC’s urban areas, diversifying diets, creating jobs, raising incomes of poor families from $50 to $300 per month, and improving the environment by managing waste and growing greenery to reduce urban temperatures and clean the air. The project has made the DRC more resilient to the effects of urbanization than most countries in the region.
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