‘Parks Are Dead Spaces, Urban Gardens Are Alive’: Experts' Dialectic on Urban Agriculture and Health from Greater Lomé

Urban agriculture (UA) is a long-standing practice in African cities, characterized by several distinctive features. In particular, the amount of land devoted to UA in these cities exceeds that used in Western countries, presenting unique challenges. This article aims to integrate the perspectives on the health of expert architects, urban planners, geographers, economists, sociologists, and experts called upon to relate to the contemporary land tenure system in African cities. These points of view are contrasted with ideas drawn from surveys of urban farmers in Greater Lomé and official urban planning documents. Methodologically, 11 experts were selected in Greater Lomé, Togo, and interviewed virtually via the Zoom platform, and their audio files were anonymized, transcribed, and manually coded. Standard tools such as Word, Excel, Firefox PDF reader, and an advanced Python tool were used for analysis to bring richness and accuracy to the analyses. Thus, according to the experts, the impacts of UA practices on health and the environment in Greater Lomé are mixed. Their discourses on health about UA are also constructed more ad hoc about other elements weighing the risks/benefits or the ‘interstitial’ aspect of UA and the legal/informal, temporary/permanent dialectic. The study reveals that experts' socio-demographic and professional factors could influence their perception of UA. Adopting an inclusive approach to decision-making is critical, considering the different stakeholders involved. The study recommends developing joint planning guides in collaboration with experts from various fields in the cities concerned to recognize local knowledge and integrate the perspectives of urban farmers into UA policies.