NAIROBI, KENYA
Nairobi, the capital and largest city of Kenya, is a dynamic metropolis with a population exceeding 4 million people. The city serves as a political, economic, and cultural hub, hosting various international organizations and diplomatic missions. Known as the "Green City in the Sun," Nairobi features a mix of modern skyscrapers, colonial-era architecture, and expansive green spaces. The city has a vibrant cultural scene, with numerous museums, markets, and a bustling nightlife.
Nairobi is also home to a unique and diverse food system. Nairobi households source food from both formal and informal food retail outlets as well as urban agriculture and rural food transfers (which are supported by the continued migration into the city). Nairobi also has a diverse food retail sector, incorporating multinational ethnic cuisines from around the world. Together these traits portray a dynamic urban food system in Nairobi.
RESEARCH on NAIROBI
HCP REPORTS
PAPERS
Towards a New Food Security Index for Urban Household Food Security
The multidimensionality of food security can confound both statistical modelling and clear policy narratives. That complexity can become amplified in urban areas where food security is often a function of both local and global factors. Rather than focusing on one dimension of food security metrics, this investigation proposes a method for building an index of urban household food access, utilization and stability. The performance of this index is compared across three aggregation methods using household surveys collected from five cities ...
Urban Food Security and Household Shocks in Nairobi, Kenya
Even though urban poverty is a key component of the development agenda in Nairobi with a focus on job creation, provision of basic infrastructure (such as roads and clean drinking water), food security has traditionally been omitted by city planners and managers despite its centrality to people’s health and wellbeing. One of the consequences of the lack of integration of food security into development planning is that emergency food preparedness planning has not been viewed as a priority. Rather, emergency ...
The Role of Infrastructure Access in Urban Household Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Southern Cities
The geographical concentration of poverty in informal neighbourhoods across cities is a common socio-economic feature of the urban form. Many of these impoverished areas also suffer from limited access to urban infrastructure. Given the expense and planning necessary to develop urban infrastructure, these areas are socially vulnerable in part because of their exclusion from urban master plans. This vulnerability is made more severe by the knock-on impacts of limited infrastructure access on other aspects of human insecurity. This paper uses ...
Urban Food Governance Perspectives in Changing African and Southern Cities
The key urban food governance question in African and other Southern cities is understanding the role that appropriate infrastructures could play in delivering positive outcomes in the urban food system. This discussion paper looks at urban food governance needs in African cities and reflects on the governance actions required in order to respond to wider food system changes and challenges. It argues that food in the African city is a public good and discusses the role that a state (and ...
Governing the Informal Food Sector in Cities of the Global South
The role of the informal food sector in the urban food system cannot be appreciated or understood without the compilation and analysis of systematic and representative data on the activities of informal enterprises across a city and along food supply chains outside it. At present, there are significant gaps in the knowledge base about the character, operation, and roles of the informal food sector; a pre-requisite for sound and supportive governance. This paper presents evidence on the relative importance of ...
Urban Food Deserts in Nairobi and Mexico City
Recent conceptualizations of “food deserts” have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated food sourcing behaviour in relation to household poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues to evolve, there has been little empirical evidence to test whether these associations hold in cities of the Global South. This discussion paper empirically tests the premises of ...
Compounding Vulnerability: A Model of Urban Household Food Security
The efficiency of the infrastructure systems in cities will define the extent to which dystopic visions of urban futures become a reality. At the level of the individual household, vulnerability to hazards in cities is defined, in part, by the ability to access essential resources and services. This discussion paper proposes a model to help explain the relationship between access to urban infrastructure systems and household vulnerability to food insecurity. Food access in cities is primarily achieved through food purchases, ...
Hungry Cities of the Global South
The recent inclusion of an urban Sustainable Development Goal in the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda represents an important acknowledgement of the reality of global urbanization and the many social, economic, infrastructural and political challenges posed by the human transition to a predomi- nantly urban world. However, while the SDG provides goals for housing, transportation, land use, cultural heritage and disaster risk prevention, food is not mentioned at all. This discussion paper aims to correct this unfortunate omission by reviewing the ...
POLICY BRIEFS
An Urban Perspective on Food Security in the Global South
The global food security policy community should reorient its actions on food security in the Global South to consider the urban food consumer. Since it is currently working with value chains in rural areas, we recommend that this view is extended into urban areas. Specifically, global and multilateral actors and national and local governments need to prioritize an urban food security agenda by engaging in and strengthening intra-urban value chains. This will have the dual result of lowering prices and ...
The SDGs, Food Security and Urbanization in the Global South
As governments develop policies to achieve SDG 2 in rapidly urbanizing countries, the need to pay particular attention to the role of the informal economy, non-food issues, pro-poor pricing structures and healthy food consumption patterns will increase. The case studies in Mexico, China, Kenya and India have highlighted important food security challenges facing urban dwellers and how to overcome them by targeting existing food systems such as supermarkets, the informal economy and PDSs. While local context will dictate the best ...
BOOK CHAPTER
Poverty and Uneven Food Security in Urban Slums
Despite increased recognition that urban slum dwellers are both extremely vulnerable and highly underserved, the national and international commitment to address urban food crises is constrained by a dearth of information. In Nairobi, Kenya, an estimated 60 % of the population live in slums or slum-like conditions. On average, the Nairobi poor spend 40–50 % of their income on food. This chapter asks whether the livelihood source of the primary breadwinner in the household determines the level of household food ...
THESES
Scarcity, Government, Population: The Problem of Food in Colonial Kenya, c. 1900–1952
- PhD Thesis - Food security in Africa is a foremost development challenge. Dominant approaches to addressing food security concentrate on availability and increasing production. This ‘productionist’ focus arguably limits the capacity of government policies to address contemporary food problems. It does so by obscuring both the specific food insecurity dynamics linked to the continent’s ongoing urban transitions, as well ...
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Do Urban Food Deserts Exist in the Global South? An Analysis of Nairobi and Mexico City
Recent conceptualizations of ‘food deserts’ have expanded from a sole focus on access to supermarkets, to food retail outlets, to all household food sources. Each iteration of the urban food desert concept has associated this kind of food sourcing behavior to poverty, food insecurity, and dietary diversity characteristics. While the term continues to evolve, there has been little empirical evidence to test whether these assumed associations hold in cities of the Global South. This paper empirically tests the premises of ...
Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Urban Slums: Experiences from Nairobi, Kenya
Food and nutrition security is critical for economic development due to the role of nutrition in healthy growth and human capital development. Slum residents, already grossly affected by chronic poverty, are highly vulnerable to different forms of shocks, including those arising from political instability. This study describes the food security situation among slum residents in Nairobi, with specific focus on vulnerability associated with the 2007/2008 postelection crisis in Kenya. The study from which the data is drawn was nested within ...
Hungry Cities: A Critical Review of Urban Food Security Research in Sub-Saharan African Cities
There has been renewed interest in the issue of food in cities in sub-Saharan Africa. A similar renewal has been noted in the North American and European contexts. However, the political, practical, and ideological starting points of these research endeavors are quite different. This paper presents a historical and political lens through which the trajectories of urban food research in sub-Saharan African can be understood. It begins with a historical analysis of the field and uses this to explain why ...