Urban Frontiers: Rethinking Market Gardening Resilience in the Face of Rapid City Expansion in Limbe, Cameroon

This study addresses a pressing knowledge gap concerning how rapid, unchecked urban expansion is undermining the resilience of market gardening in Limbe, Cameroon—a sector vital for local food security and inclusive livelihoods. Unlike prior assessments limited to mapping land use change or basic socio-economic profiling, this research uniquely integrates spatial analysis, household surveys, and stakeholder interviews to examine the adaptive strategies and vulnerabilities of smallholder market gardeners. The results provide new evidence that built-up areas in Limbe have expanded nearly eightfold since 1995, shrinking cropland below 6% of total land by 2025 and sharply intensifying spatial and socio-economic pressure on predominantly female growers. These findings are significant because only 21.8% of gardeners benefit from secure tenure, average plot size and income have declined by over one-third since 2015, and more than half now report precarious livelihoods. This study demonstrates that while gardeners actively pursue land-sharing, crop diversification, and group action, persistent tenure insecurity and policy fragmentation sharply limit their capacity for sustainable adaptation. Implications for urban policy include the urgent need for participatory land use planning, formalized tenure, and more robust institutional support for peri-urban growers. The findings advance current understanding of urban agriculture’s vulnerability amid African urbanization and provide actionable evidence to inform resilient urban food system development locally and in similarly dynamic cities.