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Urban and peri-urban agriculture plays an important role in meeting the food and nutrition needs of those living in the increasingly urbanised cities in Africa. The extent and scope of the practise of urban and peri-urban agriculture differs from one city to another depending on the economic, environmental, socio-political, and contextual conditions at play. Using household data drawn from urban Techiman and Tamale in the Brong Ahafo and Northern regions of Ghana respectively, this paper descriptively analyses the contribution of households' engagement in agriculture on urban households' food security. The results show that, nearly half (43%) of urban residents are involved in the production of food either in the urban or rural areas or both, primarily for household consumption and sale of surplus produce. Households who do not engage in agriculture raise their cash incomes through engagement in informal businesses. The picture is however different for households that engage in urban and rural agriculture. For such households, income raised from agriculture (rural and urban combined) is the highest in both cities contributing nearly half (43%) and about a third (33%) of total cash incomes in Techiman and Tamale respectively. The results underscore the need to place the discussion on the contribution of urban agriculture to urban food security in the broader context of the different food production arrangements available to urban households, both in urban and rural areas.

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Every person desires some level of inner fulfilment at different stages of life and this could come from a combination of several factors including material and resource acquisition and social prestige. The challenge, however, is whether happiness levels across the different social strata are the same, especially among the poor and the neglected. Using data from the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty survey in Ghana, we analyse the factors that influence happiness among the extreme poor. The positive and negative factors are discussed in the paper.