Gender analysis of land use for urban agriculture and sustainability of livelihoods in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Abstract

This paper examined the gender analysis of land use for urban agriculture and sustainability of Livelihoods in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This is predicated on the fact that despite the stated contribution of urban agriculture (UA) to household food security, employment generation and poverty reduction, it has not received due recognition and policy support. The study was carried out in Freetown, Sierra Leone using a cluster sampling approach. From a list of 20 clusters, 6 were randomly selected and 10% of members in each cluster selected randomly (nmale = 30; nfemale = 61; n = 91) were interviewed. A survey research design was adopted in this study and the respondents for the study were stratified in terms of gender and UA enterprises. The majority of producers were female with the gross margin on male and female managed farms were 15130 and 23895 Leones per farm/ season respectively. Also, female managed farm had a higher return than male managed farms. Significant determinants of contribution of the UA income to household income are household size (t = -5.13), access to credit (t = 4.09), membership of farmers' association (t = 4.23), gender (t = -2.40), age (t = 1.78) and farm size (t = -4.97). As household size and the number of male producers increases, income from UA decreases.