Urban Horticulture for Food Security and Livelihood Restoration in Mutare City, Eastern Zimbabwe

Rufaro, T Gwetsayi, ,Clayton Mashapa,Lighton Dube

doi:10.15580/gjss.2016.3.082116130

Abstract

Urban Horticulture for Food Security and Livelihood Restoration in Mutare City, Eastern Zimbabwe

Highlights

The United Nations set Millennium Development Goal number one called for a 50% reduction between 1990 and 2015 in the proportion of people who suffered from hunger and whose income was less than US $2 a day (Foeken, 2008)
United Nations World Food Programme Protocol on assessing household food consumption score was compared at baseline status versus the post project inception Responses were summarised using descriptive statistics
The minimum and maximum ages were 19 and 67 years respectively though the mode of the age was 44 years. This highlighted that most urban farmers were of middle to old age and this is likely attributed to the prevailing high unemployment rate in the formal sectors in Zimbabwe (World Bank, 2010), the middle aged to old aged household heads find themselves engaging in urban horticulture for self employment to sustain their livelihood

Summary

Introduction

The United Nations set Millennium Development Goal number one called for a 50% reduction between 1990 and 2015 in the proportion of people who suffered from hunger and whose income was less than US $2 a day (Foeken, 2008). This goal was elusive to achieve especially in sub-Sahara Africa (Fox and Liebenthal, 2006; Barret et al 2008; Mbuli, 2008). African urban areas tend to experience persistent hunger than the intermittent hunger that can found in rural areas This is because urban populations depend largely on income to access food, yet prevailing employment and income conditions seem to be stagnating. Between 2000 and 2009, Zimbabwe experienced a series of socio-economic challenges resulting in loss of livelihoods, widespread poverty, high unemployment and reduced food security (WorldBank, 2010)

Methods

Results

Conclusion