A Short Review on African Horticultural Greenhouses

Abstract

African horticulture is increasingly portable, and horticultural greenhouses have played a significant role in boosting yields, resource productivity, and income by optimizing crop production environments, preventing pests and crop exposition to undesired climatic condi- tions during critical periods. To characterize production systems, progress made, challenges and perspectives for African horticultural greenhouses. A search combining the terms "Africa", "horticulture" and "greenhouse"was conducted on Scilit with a meta-analysis of the extracted data performed on ATLAS.ti using the terms "benefit", "areas", "commodities", "labour", "irriga- tion", "soil fertility", "pest management", and "market" as key terms. Horticultural greenhouses have helped expand production, mainly to unfavourable climatic areas from the semi-arid territories in the Sahel to unimodal rainfall regions of Sub-Sharan Africa. As a result, the African horticultural sector annual earns c.a., US$ 2.7 billion, primarily from flowers, fresh vegetables, seed, and spices exported to Europe. Kenya, with 63%of the earnings share, followed by South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Uganda, are the primary producers. Large-scale farms build costly greenhouses while resource-constrained smallholders adhere to cheaper alternatives such as high tunnels. Low wages, the predominance of non-permanent jobs, gender inequali- ties, competing claims in water use for irrigation are among the most critical sectoral constraints. Growing investment in drip irrigation and rainwater storage are alternative solutions to counter water shortage. Horticultural greenhouses are likely to expand and improve substantially shortly, but there is a need to address labour, water use a access to investment funds by smallholders.