Food Smart Cities: The role of urban agriculture in north central Ethiopia

The innovative concept of Food Smart Cities (FSCs) has been recently put forward to rethink and redesign urban food systems to be more sustainable, inclusive and healthy. .An important component within FSCs is urban agriculture (UA), which has been increasingly proposed as a lever to overcome the rising levels of urban poverty and malnutrition. Yet, if UA is not well embedded with the urban food systems, it might bring additional burdens for cities’ economic resilience, environmental integrity, gender inclusiveness and food and nutrition security. The overall aim of this PhD project is therefore to understand and evaluate the contribution of UA to sustainable, inclusive and healthy urban food systems. We will use interdisciplinary approach to investigate the role of urban agriculture in promoting food smart cities in north central Ethiopia. It will evaluate technical, institutional and commercial possibilities and constraints, gender inclusiveness, economic and environmental synergies and trade-offs, and contribution of UA to food and nutrition security. 

This PhD project, which received funding from ARES, is carried out by Amare Molla (2022-2026) in collaboration with Wollo University (Ethiopia).