Women and Youth Farmer led Urban Food System Transformation: Urban Food Hives in Uganda

As urbanization progresses, accessing nutritious and healthy foods has become challenging for households and communities due to the complex nature of food systems and poverty. The Urban Food Hives Initiative (UFH) in Uganda aims to build resilient, nutritious, equitable, and regenerative food systems in Kampala, with a focus on the voices and leadership of women and youth. Currently, most small-scale, informal actors in Ugandan food systems, including farmers, informal vendors and distributors, do not receive fair economic returns. Oxfam’s approach to transforming urban food systems is grounded in principles of agroecology and is part of a multi-country programme contributing to a new vision for the future of food. 

The objective of UFH is to promote access to safe, healthy foods by strengthening agroecological farming, urban food linkages and marketing, and multistakeholder policy mechanisms for urban food system coordination. By empowering women and youth to grow their own food and utilizing agroecology practices to maximize production in urban settings, as well as coordinating civil society policies to create an enabling environment, UFH can meet the growing demand for food resulting from urbanization sustainability, without further environmental degradation. Additionally, a robust urban agrifood system will enhance employment opportunities for young people and increase access to nutritious traditional foods, which urban populations have limited knowledge of.