Publications by Akuto Akpedze Konou

Bridging the Gap: Misaligned Perceptions of Urban Agriculture and Health Between Planning and Design Experts and Urban Farmers in Greater Lomé, Togo

Jérôme Chenal, Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda, Akuto Akpedze Konou, Pablo Txomin Harpo de Roulet

Urban agriculture (UA) is a longstanding practice in African cities, characterized by some distinctive features. In particular, the amount of land devoted to UA in these cities exceeds that used in Western countries, presenting challenges in areas such as ...

MDPI AG2025

Urban Farming and Health Challenges: Exploring Spatial Planning and Design Paradigms for Improved Urban Agriculture in Dar es Salaam and Greater Lomé, Togo (Africa)

Akuto Akpedze Konou

Although Urban Agriculture (UA) in Africa has a range of benefits for food security, as the literature asserts, these benefits are mixed and sometimes make the legitimacy of planning this activity on urban land controversial. Yet, to achieve the goal of a ...

EPFL2024

Exploring the Association of Urban Agricultural Practices with Farmers’ Psychosocial Well-Being in Dar es Salaam and Greater Lomé: A Perceptual Study

Jérôme Chenal, Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda, Akuto Akpedze Konou

African urban agriculture (UA) has garnered attention for its contributions to food security and socio-economic improvement. However, its impact on the psychological well-being of farmers has received minimal focus. This study explores the psychosocial eff ...

MDPI AG2024

Impact of Topography on Rural Cycling Patterns: Case Study of Bugesera District, Rwanda

Jérôme Chenal, Rim Mrani, Akuto Akpedze Konou, Baraka Jean-Claude Munyaka

Rural mobility in Africa is an under-researched issue. Rural communities have often suffered from reduced mobility that has hampered their access to essential services and facilities such as education, health care, food, and clean water. In many rural comm ...

2023

Two Decades of Architects' and Urban Planners' Contribution to Urban Agriculture and Health Research in Africa

Jérôme Chenal, Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda, Akuto Akpedze Konou, Baraka Jean-Claude Munyaka

Urban agriculture (UA) is an ancient practice in Africa that meets social- and health-related needs. However, it is unclear whether architects and urban planners have incorporated the topic into their research and practices. This study aimed to assess the ...

MDPI2023

Examining African contributions to global health: Reflections on knowledge circulation and innovation

Jérôme Chenal, Vitor Pessoa Colombo, Julia Tischler, Akuto Akpedze Konou, Jürg Utzinger

This article unites different disciplinary debates on ‘southern innovation’, ‘theory from the South’, and ‘decolonisation of knowledge’ in order to discuss existing understandings around the role of Africa in the production of health-related knowledge, pub ...

2022

More than seven decades of Acta Tropica: Partnership to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Akuto Akpedze Konou

The inaugural issue of Acta Tropica has been published in 1944, at a time of utmost international isolation and uncertainty due to World War II. Now, more than seven decades later, Acta Tropica is a trusted outlet to communicate and disseminate scientific ...

2022

More than seven decades of Acta Tropica: Looking back to move into the future

Akuto Akpedze Konou, Jürg Utzinger

Acta Tropica is an international, peer-reviewed journal advancing scientific research in the fields of tropical medicine and parasitology. This article elucidates the rich history of the journal and speculates about its future. Acta Tropica was launched in ...

2022

Analyzing four decades of literature on urban planning studies in Africa (1980–2020)

Jérôme Chenal, Rémi Jaligot, Armel Firmin Kemajou Mbianda, Akuto Akpedze Konou

Although rapid population growth will give them a significant weight in global urbanization by the middle of the century, African cities remain little known. As a result, they are essentially outside the global intellectual arena on urban issues, which jus ...

2020