Paper short abstract:

This communication analyses the strategies put in place by young people from rural exodus in the city of N'Djamena. It highlights their integration into working life and the city through the development of market gardening and the production of nurseries in the middle of the urban fabric.

Paper long abstract:

Like many African societies, Chad's countryside is characterized by deteriorating living conditions, forcing a large majority of rural people to flee to urban centers to hope for a better life. If two decades ago, this rural workforce helped absorb the demand for informal domestic services in the different sectors of the city, the current trend is to develop market gardening and the production of nurseries in urban areas. The methodological approach adopted combines field observations, interviews with resource persons and a survey of a random sample of young people working in urban agriculture and nursery production activities.

The results highlight that the difficulties of access to formal and / or informal jobs of rural youth, led these actors to show ingenuity to draw on their resources and adapt to the realities on the ground to develop a promoting agriculture. The latter is a response, not only to the current changes in eating habits, more oriented towards plant raw vegetables and the needs of exotic plants, but is practiced on small spaces whose access is part of an intelligent approach. The ingenuity and resourcefulness shown by rural young people in cities is a response to the employment crisis, healthy eating and environmental balance in a context where public policies have failed in terms of protecting green spaces in cities.