Publications: AFSUN-FUEL

Over the last decade, two issues have risen to the top of the international development agenda: Food Security & Migration and Development. Each has its own agency champions, international gatherings, national line ministries and voluminous bodies of research. There is thus a massive institutional and substantive disconnect between these two development agendas. The reasons are…

The current urban transition in the Global South is at the heart of discussions about the relationship between climate change and food security. This paper explores the links between climate change and food security within the context of the urban transition taking place in Southern Africa. Climate change is expected to negatively accentuate existing levels…

The nutrition transition, including the presence of malnutrition and obesity in poor urban populations (the so-called ‘double burden’ of disease), is occurring in Southern Africa in the context of massive rural-urban migration and rapid urbanization. This seemingly contradictory situation poses one of the major threats to public health in the developing world, and impacts the…

In most African cities, there is sufficient food to feed everyone and considerable wastage of fresh and processed foodstuffs. Poor households are food insecure because they cannot afford to purchase enough quality food and are unable to access the surplus food that exists. Food redistribution NGOs are well established in Southern Africa but more recently…

Considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of the HIV and AIDS epidemic on small farmers and the food security of the rural poor. Despite the rapid progression of the epidemic in rural areas, it remains an ever-growing challenge in the continent’s rapidly-growing cities where prevalence rates are still higher than in rural areas.…

The paper provides an overview of the current state of urban food production in the poorer areas of Southern African and insights into the role of urban food production as a food source for the urban poor. The survey shows that across the region rates of participation in urban food production in poor urban communities…

As in many parts of the world, supermarket expansion and control of food supply chains is having a major impact on the quality, quantity and price of food available to urban residents. Growing numbers of poor households in Southern African cities now obtain their food, directly or indirectly, from supermarkets. In most cities, these same…

In order to provide baseline information on the state of urban food insecurity in Southern Africa, AFSUN planned and implemented an eleven city survey in eight SADC countries in 2008-9. The resultant regional data base is a rich source of information for evidence-based policy-making on food security. This paper begins with an overview of the…

This background paper seeks to systematically address a critical aspect of African food security: the vulnerability of the urban poor to food insecurity. In a continent undergoing rapid urbanization, with an increasingly greater proportion of the population looking to the towns and cities for their livelihood, the issue of urban food security has been curiously…