Publications: Journal Articles
Family Structure and Severe Food Insecurity in Maputo and Matola, Mozambique
Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 267. The rapid growth of Maputo and Matola (neighbouring cities in Mozambique) has dramatically shifted the vulnerability profiles of these cities. Poor neighbourhoods across these two cities may now face the prospect of becoming food deserts. Scholars have defined African urban food deserts by the co-occurrence of poverty and food insecurity. This…
Do Urban Food Deserts Exist in the Global South? An Analysis of Nairobi and Mexico City
Sustainability 2019, 11(7), 1963. 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…
Mapping Obesogenic Food Environments in South Africa and Ghana: Correlations and Contradictions
Sustainability, 2019, 11(14), 3924. In sub-Saharan Africa, urbanisation and food systems change contribute to rapid dietary transitions promoting obesity. It is unclear to what extent these changes are mediated by neighbourhood food environments or other factors. This paper correlates neighbourhood food provision with household consumption and poverty in Khayelitsha, South Africa and Ahodwo, Ghana. Georeferenced…
The Food Desert as a Concept and Policy Tool in African Cities: An Opportunity and a Risk
Sustainability. 2019, 11(2): 458. The idea that food insecurity can be resolved by increasing the presence of supermarkets has been gaining traction in African cities and has recently gained political traction in Africa. This paper interrogates the potential value and risks associated with the adoption of the discourse of the food desert in the African…
The Impact of Proximity to Wet Markets and Supermarkets on Household Dietary Diversity in Nanjing City, China
Sustainability 2018, 10(5), 1465. This study investigated the influence of the proximity to wet markets and supermarkets on urban household dietary diversity in Nanjing. Based on the data collected through a citywide survey in 2015 and the map data of wet markets and supermarkets, the Poisson regression model was deployed to examine the correlations between…
Food Swamps and Poor Dietary Diversity: Longwave Development Implications in Southern African Cities
Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4425. While the literature on food deserts focuses on limited availability of food in urban settings, ‘food swamps’ may better characterize the extensive prevalence and accessibility of cheap, highly processed foods. For urban populations, access to nutritionally inadequate poor-quality food has dire developmental consequences. The long-wave impacts of malnutrition at gestational and…
Urban Food Sources and the Challenges of Food Availability According to the Brazilian Dietary Guidelines Recommendations
Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4643. The study investigated availability and food sources in urban areas using elements of the NOVA food classification system, adopted by the Brazilian Dietary Guidelines, in a Brazilian municipality. In addition, the study also aimed to identify inequalities in the geographical distribution of food retailers that commercialize healthy and/or unhealthy foods. This…
Food Purchasing Characteristics and Perceptions of Neighborhood Food Environment of South Africans Living in Low-, Middle- and High-Socioeconomic Neighborhoods
Sustainability 2018, 10(12), 4801. Using intercept surveys, we explored demographic and socioeconomic factors associated with food purchasing characteristics of supermarket shoppers and the perceptions of their neighborhood food environment in urban Cape Town. Shoppers (N = 422) aged ≥18 years, categorized by their residential socioeconomic areas (SEAs), participated in a survey after shopping in supermarkets…
Building a Global Urban Science
Nature Sustainability. 2018, 1: 2–4.
Food Price, Food Security and Dietary Diversity: A Comparative Study of Urban Cameroon and Ghana
Journal of International Development. 2018, 30(1): 42-60. This paper contributes to the urban food security literature by presenting the results of 600 household surveys conducted in Ghana and Cameroon. In this, we show how dietary diversity, which is a well‐developed proxy for food security, is similar in both countries but varies significantly based on household…
