The micro-gardens’ project started, in Dakar, in 1999 within the framework of a Technical Cooperation Programme between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Senegalese Government. A Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) of FAO allowed its extension, in 2001, in the ohter regional capitals of Senegal. The micro-garden project allowed introduction of new technologies concerning out of land hoticultural production on yards, roofs and vacant places. At 2004, it became a programme. Its main objective is to participate in poverty reduction. Its goal was, and is still remaining, to provide fresh vegetables to poor families for improving their food supply and their nutrition. This objective is also materialized by income generation after selling the production’s surplus. To consolidate micro-gardens and improve food security in Dakar, another programme has been signed, in 2006 and for two years, between the municipalities of Milan (Italia) and Dakar.

Another objective of those initiatives is to faciltate access to urban and periurban horticultural production for all the city-dwellers who didn’t have access to farmland because of the urban land pressure. The micro-gardens programmes set a process of innovation in agriculture. As a matter of fact, by mobilizing human ressources in the administration and the agricultural research fields, they promote reusing of agricultural waste like peanut’s shell and rice’s chaff. As those inputs are brought from the national agriculture’s production, they are easy to achieve even by poor people. Those programs also contribute to improve living environment both by recycling agricultural waste and by greening houses and cities in Dakar and in the others regional capitals. The micro-garden technology is adopted by all the social categories: the poor as well as the rich, men and women, young and old people, valid and handicaped persons. More than 4000 families were trained on the micro-garden technology.