Climate change and its impact on urban agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: A literature review

Abstract

Recent surveys have shown that the global urban population is increasing at an accelerated rate. As a result, the associated increased demand for food items has pushed up the overall cost of living for urban dwellers. To mitigate this increased cost of living urban dwellers increasingly find solace in agricultural activities. This surge in urban agricultural activities comes at a time characterized by long term shifts in temperatures, rainfall patterns and general weather conditions. While many researchers have presented evidence of increased urban agricultural activities, there remains a paucity of integrated literature that summarizes climate change issues on urban agriculture. This research reviewed literature on the influence of climate change on urban agricultural operations in sub-Saharan African cities. A narrative review approach was employed to summarize and synthesize findings and make recommendations for future research. The review employed the key terms ‘urban farming’, ‘urban agriculture’, ‘climate change’, ‘peri-urban agriculture’, and ‘urban agricultural production’ to search relevant literature indexed in databases: Scopus, Directory of Open Access Journals, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Academic Search (EBSCO). The choice of these keywords was informed by the authors’ specialist understanding of urban agriculture and climate change. There is consensus among the reviewed literature that climate change affects urban agriculture from production to processing, storage, and distribution. This study also established that the extent and magnitude of climate change impacts differ from one region to another. Therefore, adaptation and mitigation strategies ought to be context specific and not universally applicable. This is important because Africa is a climatologically diverse continent so that the impact of climate change faced by one sub-Saharan African city may be different from that for other cities in other regions. A framework that simplifies the effects of climate change on urban agriculture-dependent households in sub-Saharan Africa was produced. More specifically, this framework is recommended to those urban farmers and policymakers that are involved in mitigating the consequences of climate change as well as achieving food and nutritional security. The authors also recommend this framework for unpacking the knowledge of the influence of climate change on urban agriculture as well as exposing directions for future research. This work adds to the growing body of knowledge in the domain of climate change on urban agriculture-dependent households.

Keywords

• crop production
• livestock production
• post-harvest losses
• distribution
• urban agriculture