Barriers to urban agriculture in Africa: a bibliometric and content co-occurrence analysis of the literature

Although research on barriers to urban agriculture (AU) exists, it has been limited to empirical studies. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis and content co-occurrence literature review were performed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the landscape of scholarly literature on what has been investigated so far. Using VOSviewer, a bibliometric analysis of 504 journal publications extracted from the Dimensions database, published between January 2020 and December 2024, was performed to show publication trends, distribution of publications with regard to journals and countries, keywords that have been used widely, and the leading themes on barriers to UA and gaps in the field of barriers to urban agriculture. There is a growing interest in UA. The top five publishers were Sustainability, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Land, and Agriculture and Cities. The top five countries were the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, China, and Germany. In addition, a content co-occurrence analysis was performed. Four research clusters appeared: ‘production in urban agriculture’, ‘household engagement in urban agriculture’, ‘policy neglect or opposition in urban agriculture’, and ‘sustainability in urban agriculture’. Content analysis showed that production has been the basis for barriers in urban agriculture research with scopes such as vegetables, water, soil, and factors and access. Studies have found that vegetable production in urban agriculture is negatively affected by the use of wastewater, soil contaminated by heavy metals, limited access to productive factors, and policy neglect or opposition. The sustainability of urban agriculture is one of its many benefits. Households engage in urban agriculture to improve their livelihood. Based on the content co-occurrence literature review, directions for future research are suggested.