Abstract:
Vegetables are important components of daily diets in Africa and important sources of income, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. As many as twenty different types of indigenous and exotic vegetables are grown at major vegetable production sites around West Africa (Figure 1). These crops provide a cheap source of proteins, vitamins and other elements essential for human health and wellbeing. In West Africa, vegetables are commonly grown in the rainfed upland ecologies and in lowland ecologies such as bolilands, riverine grasslands and inland valley swamps. Agroecosystems in these various ecologies offer great opportunities for commercial production of vegetables in West Africa.