Research essay produced for ‘Africa: Environment, Development, People’

Urban Agriculture in Freetown Slums, Sierra Leone: Alternative Visions to Market Economy Development

This paper will explore the prospect of urban agriculture, as a grassroots poverty alleviation strategy, through subsistence farming, for slum-dwellers. Internationally, urban agriculture (UA) has served many individuals as a lucrative business, while for others it has emerged as a survival strategy (Vermeiren et al 2013). System failure to keep up with market demand coupled with inadequate responses from authorities has forced urban households to adopt a range of self-help measures to contribute to the food supply in a city (Drakakis-Smith, Bowyer-Bower, and Tevera 1995; Kanu et al 2009; Maconachie, Binns and Tengbe 2011; Mun Bbun and Thornton 2013). Subsistence survival is highly relevant in Sierra Leone; the gradual transition towards a multi-party democracy and the defeat and handover of power from an incumbent regime has failed so far to restore Freetown following a ten-year civil war between 1991-2002 (Jefferson 2014). This conflict resulted in mass-migration of internally displaced people into Freetown, and the growth of urban slums. These slums are cesspools for poverty, informal employment and malnutrition. Slum-dwellers have low financial capital, human capital (health and education), physical capital (inputs and machinery) and natural capital (land), leaving them in the slum poverty trap. The purpose of this paper is to showcase the failure of the market economy to alleviate these people’s hardships, and to propose a grassroots alternative. This will be achieved by exploring UA as a subsistence activity. UA is a method of poverty alleviation on a subsistence level due to its opportune synergy of the available capitals of slums dwellers, and, most importantly, its ability to create social capital. Despite support by multi-nationals including the UNDP and UN-HABITAT, UA has grown across Sub-Saharan Africa “with little official recognition, regulation or support” (FAO 2012, p.5). The Government of Sierra Leone has failed to recognise the importance of UA, yet the support of other actors in Freetown will be presented as complimentary to a grassroots approach.

There is a primary need to consolidate the variety

of ways UA has been defined. Firstly, as a process,

UA can be restricted purely to farming, (Zezza and

Tasciotto 2010) as it will be here, or opened to all

stages in the agricultural lifecycle, including

transport, processing and marketing (Thornton,

Momoh, and Tengbe 2012). Secondly, as a spatial

activity, boundaries may be drawn from the

location of the farm activity (Lynch et al 2012) or

the domicile of the household (Zezza and Tasciotto

2010); the latter will be adopted. Finally, public

involvement must be outlined. An inclusive, open-

minded study would acknowledge that the

majority of participants in UA have an alternative

primary income source, or farm in a subsistence

capacity; consideration limited to persons who

consider UA their primary source of employment

has resulted in under-emphasis of brevity in

Freetown. Under this limitation, Statistics Sierra

Leone (2015) recorded only .05% of Freetown’s

population as employed in UA. This boundary was

also applied by major stakeholders in Freetown (for

example, the RUAF which records and considers

only 1400 people across Freetown (Research centre for Urban

Agriculture & Forestry 2009)) and in prominent literature produced

on Freetown (including work by Lynch et al (2012) and Maconachie,

Binns and Tengbe (2011)). Significantly, these reports are produced

centralising the market economy. This paper disregards the market

economy as an avenue for UA by slum-dwellers, and so for any

informed recommendations to be made, all levels of public

involvement (subsistence, informal, secondary income) must be

considered.

Before UA can be addressed, the relevance of Freetown must be understood. Unlike other Sub-Saharan African Countries Sierra Leone faces a dual challenge: improving the livelihoods of urban residents and recovering from devastating societal breakdown. A decade of anguish, synonymous with blood diamonds, left 2 million people displaced, half of whom permanently relocated to Freetown (Lynch et al 2012, the Government of sierra Leone 2003). In the late 1990’s, rebels blockaded the passage of food into Freetown, and UA served as the ‘breadbasket’ for the city which would otherwise have starved (Forkuor and Cofie 2011, p.1018). Between 1986 and 2000, a 43% increase in agricultural land around the outskirts of Freetown occurred, demonstrating the sheer growth of this activity (Image One). Lynch et al (2012) suggest the result has been a strong tradition of urban cultivation. Nationwide poverty skyrocketed during the war, and whilst clearly the livelihoods of many people nationwide have improved, the effects have been uneven (Figure one).

Image One: Land-cover change between 1974, 1986 and 2000 in

Freetown

Source: Forkuor and Cofie 2011

Figure One: Nationwide Poverty in Sierra Leone

Source: EURODAD 2005 in Lynch et al 2012;

Statistics Sierra Leone 2015

57%

89%

53%

0%

50%

100%

The proportion of people living inextreme poverty

Nationwide Poverty in Sierra Leone

1990 2002 2011

Despite country-wide improvements, devastating poverty in urban slums prevail. The civil conflict in Freetown added both to the creation and composition of slums (Amin 2013; UN-HABITAT 2006). Undesirable areas, the periphery of Freetown and mountainous and coastal land, have been occupied with slum settlements (Image Two). Slum residents face several challenges (Figure Two) which are further complicated by insecurity of tenure; the government attempts to evict and demolish slums (Clark-Ginsberg 2015; Jefferson 2014). Despite prevalence, the Government of Sierra Leone (2013, the agenda for prosperity, the road to middle income status) and the World Bank (Social Protection Assessment), working with the Government, make no reference to slums. Yet, they claim to prioritize “protect(ing) the poorest and most vulnerable, reduc(ing) poverty, and mak(ing) growth more inclusive” (Silverio Marques et al 2013, p.2). There is a disparity between the prioritization and the failure to acknowledge slums, which requires explanation. Firstly, a tentative assumption can be drawn from a disaster response case-study: The National Government withheld assistance when fire destroyed ten houses in the coastal slum, Susan’s Bay, stating that ‘it did not want to provide material support as they feared that… it would incentivise further settlement’ (Clark-Ginsberg 2015, p.45). Clearly, the Government does not frame slums as a transitory phenomenon (Marx, Stoker and Suri 2013). A second explanation is exploitation. The sad reality is that the composition of slums nurture corruption. Marx, Stoker and Suri (2013, p. 198) suggest that globally, the maintenance of high transaction costs and opaque government mechanisms can be beneficial to ‘bureaucratic entrepreneurs’. These slum lords extract high rents, ensnaring residents in the slum poverty trap. This corruption of the market economy further emphasises the need to seek poverty alleviation outside traditional capitalist systems. UA should be considered as a strategy to improve livelihoods

in Freetown slums. Clearly, there is stress on the food system

from residential influx which services still haven’t catered for

(Kanu et al 2009). The toll of this is felt by slum-dwellers; in

fact, the prevalence of underweight, stunting, and wasting is

greater in the Freetown slums than in rural areas nationwide

(Marx, Stoker and Suri 2013). Highlighting structural

inequalities, the percentage of food insecure households almost doubles in slum areas (Figure Three). Food

insecurity in these areas is driven by access rather than availability (Smit 2016). Where the rural poor are often

able to produce their own basic goods, the urban poor (including slum-dwellers) are largely dependent upon

the cash economy, making them increasingly vulnerable. They are particularly susceptible to food-price shocks

and are consistently the group in society that suffers most from higher food prices (Zezza and Tasciotto 2010).

Challenges: Examples:

Environmental disasters

storm surges, landslides, flash floods, deforestation, poor embankment

Health Diseases (including the Ebola epidemic), home delivery of children,

Sanitation Lack of waste management, open defecation, hanging toilets, free-range animals and living with animals.

Basic Services Unplanned growth, Limited electricity, limited road access, self-policing

Employment Joblessness, subsistence employment, irregular work and informal trading, pig rearing and slaughtering, corruption.

Figure Two: Characteristics of Slums in Freetown Source: Clark-Ginsberg 2015 and Jefferson 2014

Administrative sub-division

Total population

% of households food insecure (severe + moderate)

Western Area Urban

885,473 23.0%

Western Area Rural

241,438 22.0%

Western Area Slum

59,905 40.3%

Figure Three: Food Insecurity in the Western Area, Sierra Leone. Source: World Food Program 2001

Image Two: Location of major slums in Freetown

Source: Adapted from information published by UN-Habitat 2006.

Created using Google Earth.

Note: UN-HABITAT 2006 listed 27 slums, yet only 9 were located using

the available technology.

UA can reduce reliance on markets for slum-dwellers, and improve their individual resilience, but only if it

occurs at a grassroots level, beyond the market economy. Obviously, land-owners and better-off farmers will

derive greater benefits from engaging in UA, and in market contexts there is a debate as to whether poorer

farmers should persist (pro-persistence: Lee-Smith 2010; against-persistence: Frayne, McCordic and

Shilomboleni 2014). Nonetheless, there has been no argument to dissuade slum-dwellers from participating at

a grassroots level. At this level, there are two, sometimes overlapping, categories of entry in the UA system:

market gardeners and subsistence farmers. One entry point into UA for slum-dwellers is as an employee of a

middle-income farm coordinator (Drakakis-Smith, Bowyer-Bower, and Tevera 1995). If pursued, the individual

will remain accountable to the market and in the slum poverty trap. In other urban contexts, employment may

be encouraged to facilitate knowledge transference and therefore human capital, yet in the Freetown slums

rural migrants brought agricultural knowledge (Kanu et al 2009; Maconachie, Binns and Tengbe 2011). Another

entry point is market gardening on government land. Poorer farmers tend to be relegated to the periphery, for

example, coastal lands surrounding slums where soil salinity is high (High Level Task Force on the Global Food

Security Crisis 2010). Goods produced are lower quality and attract higher transportation costs than those

associated with central farms. Again, market entry is not advisable. Instead, purely subsistence, grassroots

operation should be promoted.

There are several obstacles for entry and continued participation in UA. The most common are land tenure and

land insecurity (Maconachie, Binns and Tengbe 2011; Thornton, Momoh & Tengbe 2012). In Sierra Leone’s

provinces, land is communally held, whilst in the Western Area (encompassing Freetown), land is owned by

individuals and therefore access is dependent on the market economy (Asiama 2005). Slum-dwellers,

realistically, have no entry into these markets, and must instead rely on natural capital from residential and

government land. An opportunity for residential UA has been discovered in Kenya. The growth of sack

gardening (planting within a sack of soil) in the Kibera slums has been a trend in UA publications, serveing as a

way for households to supplement food supplies (Gallaher et al 2013). Prospects for farming on government

land also exist in Freetown. Wetlands have been reserved for farmers under the Wetlands Policy since its

establishment in 1970. Urban development is impossible on wetlands experiencing seasonal flooding, yet this

process brings a raised water table and sediment that ensures annual replenishment of soil fertility, making

them suitable for cultivation (Lynch et al 2012). Unfortunately, enforcement is frequently ineffective (Cadzow

and Binns 2016). Some farmers are being charged rent for wetlands that should in fact be state land, while

others are being threatened with eviction by ‘owners’ (Lynch et al 2012, p.36). Unavoidably, most land in

Freetown has been inherited without proof of ownership, creating an environment ripe for corruption. Other

obstacles include the cost of inputs (Lynch et al 2012), labour difficulties (Maconachie, Binns and Tengbe

2011), theft in public areas (Drakakis-Smith, Bowyer-Bower, and Tevera 1995), and environmental and

climactic conditions (Thornton, Momoh, & Tengbe 2012). The reader should consider their multiplicity, yet

addressing these obstacles is beyond the scope of this paper, as such literature does not exist.

Attention will now be transferred to the governance of UA. From a governance lens, there is a wide array of actors working alongside the Government of Sierra Leone who have significant influence, including multinationals, (the World Food Program and the World Bank), international NGO’s, (the Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security Foundation (RUAF), and departments, (Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS)). The governance of UA is varied depending on the focus of the actor. If the focus is too narrow, uptake of policy is ill-advised. For example, Badami and Ramankutty (2015) propose UA as a food security solution for the city agglomerate. Due to land limitation, they conclude that that city-wide outcomes from UA are minimal, and policy makers should not waste resources promoting and supporting UA interventions. On the other hand, a broad focus may identify environmental benefits for the entire city. When managed properly, UA contributes to urban waste recycling, urban beautification, climate change mitigation, climate change adaption through increased vegetation cover and biodiversity (Badami and Ramankutty 2015; FAO 2012; Lee-Smith 2010; UN_HABITAT 2014). Slum-dwellers, as previously stated, tend to be pushed to the periphery, and farming on mountains around Freetown can also restore soil erosion caused by unplanned expansion during the civil war from deforestation and inhabitancy (High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis 2010). Another broad focus around UA considers improvements to social capital. This will be the focus of the remainder of the paper.

Social sustainability can be an outcome of UA. This includes inclusivity, community building, empowerment,

and solidarity (Badami and Ramankutty 2015). One construction of social sustainability is social capital, ‘the

social relationships which support productive efforts’ (Gallaher et al 2013, p.390). In the wake of violent

conflict, the Government of Sierra Leone (2003) acknowledged that building social capital would be a key

element to ensuring community re-establishment and peaceful coexistence. Although Maconachie, Binns and

Tengbe (2011) recommend that UA associations help build social capital, and must be encouraged by a

Government who has a large task ahead to put back together the conflict ravaged country, the Government

has not responded. In fact, in Sierra Leone, the High Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis (2010, p.3)

suggests that UA’s “importance is not registered with policy makers”. Many Government and third-party

publications were considered, and no reference to UA was uncovered (The Government of Sierra Leone 2003,

Sierra Leone National Social Action Report; The Government of Sierra Leone 2013, The agenda for prosperity, the road to

middle income status; FAO: Kargb, M.S. 2009, Review of past agricultural policies in Sierra Leone; MAFFS 2009, National

Sustainable Agriculture Development Plan 2010-2030; MAFFS, Sierra Leone Agricultural Sector Review; the World Bank:

Silvério Marques, J, Van Dyck, J, Namara, S, Costa, R & Bailor, S 2013, Social Protection and Labor: Sierra Leone Social

Protection Assessment; World Food Program 2001, The state of food security and nutrition in Sierra Leone). Clearly, the

Government hasn’t prioritized UA policy. Two other actors in Sierra Leone have supported this intervention.

The RUAF (together with Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI)) initiated the creation of the Freetown Urban

and Peri-urban Agriculture Action Platform (FUPAAP) (later FUPAP). FUPAP was a platform for farmers to input

on decisions about UA policy until 2013, when funding was withdrawn (Kanu et al 2009; Cadzow and Binns

2016). Participants in UA were encouraged by FUPAP and the RUAF to form associations and register them

with MAFFS (Cadzow and Binns 2016; Lynch et al 2012). Associations bring farmers together, enabling the

pooling of resources and knowledge, which improves productivity (Gallaher et al 2013). For example, theft can

be reduced when farmers protect each other’s crops. Associations also give farmers a united front, and

increase their capacity to advocate, manage and negotiate with stakeholders (Cadzow and Binns 2016). The

work of these actors has clearly contributed to social capital, and at a capacity which enables grassroots

assistance instead of trapping participants in a market.

The plight of Freetown slum-dwellers has been systematically ignored by actors and exploited by markets. Residents of slums must overcome these failings to improve their livelihoods, by initiating grassroots responses. UA, as a subsistence activity, can improve malnutrition, reduce vulnerability to shocks and disconnect the poorest people from total market reliance. Entry into urban farming is associated with many obstacles, namely land tenure and land insecurity, and corruption. By farming on a subsistence level, these can be overcome. Where the Government failed to address UA in policy, other actors, FUPAP and the RUAF, have assisted in the formation of farming associations and successfully improved social capital. As previously mentioned, the RUAF does limit their scope in publications to those primarily employed in UA, and enquiry must be made into whether the benefits of their support for associations are reaching slum residents. Further research into subsistence farming in Freetown slums is encouraged.

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