From Health to Education, from Safety to Environment, urban social farms and food gardens have an impact on a community across a very wide range of dimensions.

Langa is the oldest township in Cape Town. It has a population of more than 100,000 people. It counts more than 30 small community food gardens from shared backyard gardens on private premises, school yards or public spaces. Members of the community take care of these assets and share the output of their work.

The Agrihub Langa is one of the 4 Agrihubs in the “Cape Flats” (generic name for the underserved communities South East of the city). The initiative started in 2022 and addresses the challenges of vulnerable and under-resourced urban communities by “introducing key enabling infrastructure, training programs, agricultural inputs and market access to increase the resilience of existing informal urban micro-farms and food gardens.”(link)

When we met with the Rirhandzu Marivate – The project manager for the Agrihub initiative- and Lwando Sawule – field worker for the Langa Agrihub-, they shared with us a number of challenges faced by the Langa Agrihub that they clearly saw as opportunities:
- How can the Agrihub establish and strengthen links with other food actors within Langa - such as feeding schemes, soup kitchens, and other initiatives supporting vulnerable people – and develop a social business?
- How can the Agrihub build connections with local retailers of fruit and vegetables in Langa?
- How can the Agrihub sell produce outside of the community?
- How could food gardening become more attractive to a younger population?

The team and the navigator will have to decide together with the organisation which research question to focus on.