Bridging the Gap: Misaligned Perceptions of Urban Agriculture and Health Between Planning and Design Experts and Urban Farmers in Greater Lomé, Togo

Akuto Konou, Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou, Pablo Txomin Harpo De Roulet, Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda and Jérôme Chenal
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Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou: Centre d’Excellence Régional sur les Villes Durables en Afrique (CERViDA—DOUNEDON), University of Lomé, Lomé 01 BP 1515, Togo
Pablo Txomin Harpo De Roulet: Communauté d’Études pour l’Aménagement du Territoire (CEAT/EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda: Communauté d’Études pour l’Aménagement du Territoire (CEAT/EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Jérôme Chenal: Communauté d’Études pour l’Aménagement du Territoire (CEAT/EPFL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-26

Abstract: Urban agriculture (UA) is a longstanding practice in African cities, characterized by some distinctive features. In particular, the amount of land devoted to UA in these cities exceeds that used in Western countries, presenting challenges in areas such as land tenure. Beyond land tenure, UA also intersects with significant health concerns, as it contributes to food security, nutrition, and urban environmental health. However, the literature highlights a gap: urban planners in Africa often show limited interest in the connection between UA and health, despite its significance. This article addresses this gap by bringing together perspectives from architects, urban planners, geographers, economists, and sociologists to explore the links between human health and UA. The experts’ points of view are contrasted with ideas drawn from surveys of urban farmers in Greater Lomé, Togo, and official urban planning documents. Methodologically, 11 experts were selected in Greater Lomé and interviewed virtually via Zoom 5.6.6, and their audio files were anonymized, transcribed, and manually coded. According to the experts, the impacts of UA practices on human health and the built environment in Greater Lomé are mixed. This study’s key findings reveal that urban farmers identify a variety of challenges, including health-related difficulties, while experts tend to assume different health concerns, highlighting a disconnect between the two perspectives. The authors recommend developing joint planning guides in collaboration with experts from various fields in the cities concerned, in order to recognize local knowledge and integrate the perspectives of urban farmers into UA policies.

Keywords: urban agriculture; dialectic; latent conceptualization; Togo; planning experts; urban human health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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