This project explored how and why women, men and youth engage as entrepreneurs in UPA, which gendered and generational opportunities and challenges they face and how this influences their empowerment - in Kigali, Rwanda.
The research reflects on the policy and practice interventions needed to develop UPA and to integrate it into inclusive urban planning activities. Data was collected through qualitative interviews and participatory observations with urban farmers and stakeholders involved in entrepreneurial UPA. The project was a collaborative effort between two senior geography researchers at SLU and a PhD candidate.
The project was aligned to contribute to the following SDGs:
- sustainable cities and communities (11);
- gender equality (5);
- zero hunger (2);
- reduced inequalities (10).
It was also a timely response to calls within agricultural research, gender studies, urban planning and organizational research to broaden empirical and theoretical rigor on gender in African UPA. The project addressed the more specifically identified needs to research UPA in its entrepreneurial forms and from a feminist perspective. By considering it as a deliberate accumulation strategy pursued by UPA entrepreneurs, it also complemented, broadened, and challenged dominant understandings of UPA as solely a subsistence strategy pursued by the poor.
