How to bring urban agriculture back to Kampala?

“I learned that you can grow crops despite having a small piece of land or barely any space,” says David Ssewanyana, a 26-year-old young man living in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

Although urban gardens in small spaces have become fashionable in all cities, it is surprising to hear this in a city where just three decades ago 35% of households grew their food almost at their doorstep.

David Ssewanyana runs a small urban garden in Kinawataka, one of Kampala's informal settlements called K zones or ghetto zones.

“It's not that people have forgotten about growing food, the problem in Kampala is the pace at which the city is going,” says Nakasujja Hellen, referring to the uncontrolled urbanization that threatens the city's green spaces.

Hellen works as a project assistant for the NGO Network of Active Citizens (NAC) that trains young people and promotes Community Youth Parliaments to influence decision-making processes in the K zone districts.

In 2019 it occurred to this NGO to create a form of local government that responded to the decentralization policy and the local government law that had already come into force in 1997 in Uganda.

The objective of this law was to delegate political, administrative and financial decisions and grant powers to local governments and administrative units.

“In these parliaments, the leaders of the K zones meet with the people of their community, who suggest those proposals that should be prioritized so that local governments prepare their budgets for the next year,” explains Hellen.

Primary health care, primary education, road works, water and sanitation, agriculture and local economic development depend on local governments with different powers to generate, collect, plan and use resources for these services, and thus Citizens, who elect the leaders of these small parliaments, can monitor whether such services are provided.

Uncontrolled urbanization has led to the encroachment and loss of agricultural land in urban and peri-urban areas, often in favor of affordable housing, directly impacting the regional food system.

The proposal to allocate more public space to green areas and urban gardens proposed by young people like Ssewanyana also depends on these local governments.

Since 2019, 248 young people are part of the green urban movement #GhettoGoGreen and have built more than 45 urban gardens in six K zones with the support of NAC and another NGO called Dreamtown, based in Copenhagen (Denmark).

Until now these gardens can only be built on privately owned land, but the idea is to build more while waiting for local governments to give their approval to allocate public space.

In Kampala, this is a wait against the clock.

Every year the population grows at a staggering rate of 5%, mainly due to rural-urban migration and high fertility rates.

This rapid growth has led to uncontrolled urbanization in the form of informal settlements where 60% of the capital's population lives.

According to the

United Nations Environment Programme's

Building Urban Resilience: Assessing Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture in Kampala

report, uncontrolled urbanization has led to the encroachment and loss of agricultural land in the urban and peri-urban area, often in favor of affordable housing, directly impacting the regional food system.

In 2010, almost a third of the metropolitan area's surface area was used as agricultural land.

Last year, 50% of the food consumed in the city originated within a 120 kilometer radius around Kampala, including 10% within the city itself, showing the importance of urban agriculture for a metropolitan population in growth.

Thanks to the decentralization of the Government in Uganda and the creation of these Community Youth Parliaments, all citizens, including the most marginal communities, actively participate in the field of public governance and demand more green spaces.

Youth participation is crucial as 78% of the population in Uganda is under 30 years old, making it the third youngest country in the world with a median age of 15.9 years.

When asked if the results that are being achieved in the orchards built on private property could legitimize their cause before the Government so that they agree to allocate public space, Hellen responds that “it could happen, but it will take time.”

These new generations of young people are the hope of Kampala, because if they are farmers in urban gardens now, tomorrow they could become local leaders firmly convinced of the benefits of returning nature and agriculture to the city.

Susana Fernández Molina

is founder and editor of The Urban Activist, a publication that focuses its reports on actions in cities to promote human progress.

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