Livestock moving into cities – good and bad in the rural-urban linkage

Theme 4, Livestock-keeping among smallholders for a nutritious diet and increased food security, in AgriFoSe2030 organised a session discussing challenges, opportunities and knowledge gaps related to urban livestock keeping at the conference Nordic Africa Days, Sept 20-21, Uppsala, Sweden.

– Livestock systems in Africa are dynamic and characterized by rapid change due to the increasing demand for livestock source food in response to human population growth, income growth and urbanization, says Theme leader Sofia Boqvist.

What impact does urbanization have on food security?

Dr Assem Abu Hatab showed that there is limited knowledge about the interactions of urbanization with other drivers of change in livestock production systems and their impacts onto food and nutritional security.

Results from his research also shows that the analyses of livestock value chains concentrate on either production and/or consumption, largely ignoring other nodes and actors along the value chain that may have an influential impact on livestock production systems and food security.

­– Special attention is clearly needed to issues of distribution, access and quality and utilization in LPSs, thus promoting an integrated course of action to deal with all dimensions of food security, says Dr Abu Hatab.

Interventions needed to develop sustainable urban livestock

PhD student Gunilla Ström Hallenberg showed that keeping livestock enables an important extra income and may hence contribute to improved livelihoods and food security for urban households. However, household practices applied among the farmers also pose serious risks for zoonotic transmission and interventions are needed to develop sustainable urban livestock systems in urban areas.

Dr Pius Nyambara described opportunities and challenges with the Harare city council in Zimbabwe keeping cattle in urban areas for the main purpose of preventing pollution of a city late by effluent from a sewage outlet.