Ouagadougou : horticulture in Ouagadougou: an Emerging Urban Food System

The population of Ouagadougou has been growing at a very high pace for several decades. The demographic and spatial growth of the city is accompanied by a consumption of agricultural space, which causes difficulties for the inhabitants in the supplying of food products, whose demand is growing. Faced with this scenario, public policies struggle to find the ideal option between different, sometimes opposite needs. At the same time the local population – first informally, then in an increasingly institutionalized way, with the support of international cooperation – has developed urban and peri-urban horticultural activities, in particular around the artificial basins close to the capital. The paper analyzes more specifically the case of the local food system that emerged around the Loumbila dam.