Welcome to the Regional Website of Urban Agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This website was created and is constantly updated and maintained by the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit of the American University of Beirut (AUB-ESDU). For more information about ESDU click here (a link which directly takes us to the ESDU home page)

The involvement of ESDU in Urban Agriculture dates back to 2004 when ESDU was selected following a competitive bidding to host the first regional “Training and Information Sharing on Urban Agriculture in Middle East and North Africa” with funding from the International Development and Research Center of Canada (IDRC).

As the course was unfolding, ESDU joined the Resource Centers on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF Foundation) and became the 7th Center of the Foundation in charge of the MENA Coordination in February 2006.

The Regional training course ended in 2007, but meanwhile ESDU had joined RUAF’s “Cities Farming for the Future” (CFF) initiative, which led to the execution of two regional action research projects in Amman – Jordan and Sana’a – Yemen, as well as a set of supporting activities during 2007 and 2008.

In January 2009, ESDU took part in RUAF’s “From Seed to Table” FStT project which build on the outcomes of CFF in Amman and Sana’a and proposed to strengthen the value chain of urban produce with special attention to marketing and access to finances for urban producers.

A wealth of information about the above mentioned projects, as well as a significant body of knowledge on Urban Agriculture which has been developed specifically for the MENA region is available on this website.

Happy browsing...

                                                                                   The RUAF-MENA TEAM
 Who is RUAF?

The Resource Centers on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF foundation) is an international network of seven regional resource centers and one global resource centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security. In 1996 the international Support Group on Urban Agriculture (SGUA) took the initiative to set up a Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF), in response to the expressed need of organizations and local governments in the South for effective mechanisms for the documentation and exchange of research data and practical experience on urban agriculture.
 
In the following years RUAF gradually evolved into and international network of regional resource centers providing training, technical support and policy advice to local and national governments, producer organizations, NGO's and other local stakeholders. In March 2005 the RUAF partners established the RUAF Foundation as their joint administrative body and liaison office. RUAF focuses its activities mainly in 20 cities, where RUAF closely cooperates with the local government, producer organizations, NGO's, universities and private enterprises.

RUAF is coordinated by the ETC-urban Agriculture Foundation in the Netherlands have partner centers in China, Ghana, India, Peru, Senegal and Zimbabwe in addition to Lebanon which was selected as the 7th RUAF Center in February 2006. The 7 centers of the RUAF Foundation are: ETC Foundation, the Netherlands; IPES-Promoción Desarrollo Sostenible, Peru, the International Water Management Institute IWMI, India and Ghana; Institut Africain de Gestion Urbaine IAGU, Senegal; Municipal Development Partnership (MDP), Zimbabwe; the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit of the American University of Beirut, AUB/ESDU Lebanon and the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGSNRR), China. 

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The Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the American University of Beirut, through its Environment and Sustainable Development Unit, acts now as the seventh center of RUAF, serving the MENA region.