Filling in the
Tapestry of Africa

November 19, 2003

By Stacey Curry Gunn

Prof. Alice Hovorka's office is decorated with reminders of southern Africa, including this wall hanging.
Photo by Martin Schwalbe

Show Prof. Alice Hovorka, Geography, a stereotype, and she'll probably find a way to break it. She's done so a couple of times already in her burgeoning research career, by challenging the pervasive gloom-and-doom portrayals of life in Africa.

Hovorka first went to Africa in her early 20s, determined to find out for herself what it was like. She says her parents were for a long time concerned about her choice of destination because they knew only CNN's version of unrelenting chaos. "Africa was uncharted territory for our family."

That first visit, a university field trip to study regional issues in southern Africa, introduced her to a place that was both complex and fascinating. And it kept her coming back, eventually to conduct research that is bringing to light and nurturing some of Africa's success stories.

"There are so many sides to Africa that it's frustrating there's only one stereotype of violence and poverty and absolute desolation that's put forward through the media," Hovorka says. "There are a multitude of different kinds of people, different classes and different ethnicities. It isn't as simple as people portray it."

In her Hutt Building office, the walls are decorated with photos that reveal images of the Africa she has come to know and the people she wants to help through her research on the interaction between people and urban environments.

The "feminist geographer" came to U of G in January. "I'm very much into action-oriented research," she says. "I want to use this knowledge to facilitate just and sustainable urban development."
Hovorka found her research niche after working and travelling in a number of southern African countries in the mid-1990s. The Republic of Botswana particularly captivated her because there she found a welcome antidote to the negativity and "bad rap" the continent as a whole had acquired.

The country is "touted as the political and economic gem of Africa," she says, explaining that its reliance on diamond mining has given it one of the strongest economies in Africa. Furthermore, she adds, the Botswana government channels those profits into strong social programs.

"With Botswana, I thought it would be interesting to see a different kind of case study, one that highlights the possibilities."

She spent a year in the country's capital, Gaborone, starting in October 2000, as part of her PhD program at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Hovorka met and interviewed men and women in and around Gaborone who produce everything from chickens and eggs to vegetables, dairy products, pork and beef. Their work - what academics call "urban agriculture" - intrigued her because it contradicted yet another stereotype.

The prevailing view of the international development community, she says, is that urban agriculture is a survival strategy used by the poor in cities because they can't afford the food in grocery stores. In Botswana, however, she found something different going on.

"Urban agriculture wasn't a survival strategy of the poor. It was an entrepreneurial strategy contributing to employment generation, agricultural production and economic diversification. Policies were being discussed around the survival strategy concept, and no one was looking at its potential as an entrepreneurial strategy."

When Hovorka started her work in Gaborone, the local government considered urban agriculture a survival strategy, something people did in their backyards. She developed governmental contacts in the Ministry of Agriculture and Department of Town and Regional Planning and shared her findings with them.

In a country that imports 90 per cent of its food from South Africa, Hovorka found that 110 entrepreneurs were growing or trying to produce food for the local market.

"It meant local business development and diversification away from diamond mining. It was something that could be taken advantage of and supported and encouraged more."

To that end, she worked with a government counterpart to co-ordinate a national workshop on urban agriculture in May 2001.

The Botswana government had been promoting business development, but had not really promoted urban agriculture, which was mainly an "unconscious outgrowth of urbanization trends," says Hovorka.

"Because it hasn't been recognized fully, there are a number of things working against people in the sector. Commercial agriculture systems aren't very well-developed, and there's not a lot of technical support or information on how to make a go of it."

Her urban agriculture research also provided an opportunity to see whether gender affected how people engaged in the sector. She concluded it does.

"Even though men and women have opportunities to enter the sector, women are mainly in broiler production (chicken meat). Women are stuck in the smaller-scale operations; they don't have the resources or the space to expand. As a result, the quantity and type of production are affected. The sector as a whole is marginalized, and women have a double burden."

Hovorka describes the Botswana government as "forward-thinking and progressive." The workshop she started has become an annual undertaking for the government, and "they're really trying to work out a strategy of how to support and develop urban agriculture in the city."

She plans to return to Gaborone next summer for three months to re-interview the people in her study to see how they're doing three years later and to explore urban entrepreneurship more broadly. It will be the next step in a longer-term project on gendered urbanization in southern Africa.

"I'm interested in the transformation from rural to urban and in understanding how men and women's societal roles and responsibilities and opportunities and constraints are affected."

Master's student Erin Kiley will go to Botswana with her next summer to work on the HIV/AIDS issue, "something that's incredibly crucial right now in that country," Hovorka says.