Urban agrosystems in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso): are there only (positive) ecosystem services?
Résumé
Like many African cities, Ouagadougou is having a great increase of its cultivated area. More generally, urban agrosystems are now highlighted worldwide, at least in scientific community. In this connection, urban nature, whatever its form is, is praised, because it contributes to the life quality in city and offers many ecosystem services (air quality improvement, recreational activities, etc.). These services are associated more particularly to urban agrosystems, adding provisioning services. We are questioning some of these services in the framework of an interdisciplinary research conducted in Ouagadougou. Our first results confirm that, in this city, agrosystems offer provisioning and cultural services, not only to gardeners. Market gardening, the main agriculture in Ouagadougou, supplies city markets with fruits and vegetables up to 90%. The cultivated areas also prove to be life places, where the people cultivate, harvest but also sell, buy, talk together, even pray and eat. We can argue that some of these services come from facilities (prayer places, restaurants) but the same idea can be given for recreational activities in urban parks. Beyond and despite these confirmations, our research shows that, in Ouagadougou, like in other African cities, urban agrosystems are not accepted by all; they are even condemned by authorities, who highlight the negative sides. And indeed, urban agriculture also has disservices, linked to the way it is practiced. In Ouagadougou, agriculture faces two difficulties: the soil poverty and the water rarity. Gardeners use the nearby resources, all the more they receive no support from authorities. They then use spent waters to irrigate their plots and waste to fertilize soil. But consequently, the products coming from theses agrosystems present public health risks. Some efforts have to be made to reduce these disservices and increase services, in order that these agrosystems fully contribute to poverty alleviation and, in the same way, to the life quality in Ouagadougou.