HCP PAPERS

Invisible Work, Visible Impacts: Gender, Migrants, and Informal Food Trade amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Global South

Laeba Khan

MiFOOD Paper No. 27 — This paper examines the abrupt and far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on women engaged in the informal food sector within the Global South. It highlights the deepening effects of the pandemic on food insecurity, gender inequality, and economic disparities. Based on a case study of three groups of women – internal migrants, international migrants, and…

Opening Access to Urban Food Security Data in Africa from the Hungry Cities Partnership

Gareth Haysom, Bruce Mcdougall, Samuel Owuor, Ndeyapo Nickanor, Ines Raimundo, Lawrence Kazembe, Lynn Woolfrey and Jonathan Crush

The Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) initiated a 7-year programme of food system research in eight cities of the Global South in January 2015: Mexico City, Mexico; Kingston, Jamaica; Windhoek, Namibia; Cape Town, South Africa; Maputo, Mozambique; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangalore, India; and Nanjing, China. This paper describes the research process in the four African cities of Cape Town, Maputo, Nairobi, and…

Increasing the Use of Spatial Data in Urban Household-Level Food Security Measurement

Jordan Blekking and Kurt Waldman

Measuring urban food security in Africa is challenging because the current food security metrics were designed for rural contexts, and often feature a bias toward food availability, yet limited urban food production means urban food security measurement requires a multi-dimensional evaluation that also takes stock of the spatial and behavioural dimensions of food security. Current metrics are poorly suited to…

Wild Foods, the Nutrition Transition and Urban Food Security in Northern Namibia

Ndeyapo Nickanor, Lawrence Kazembe and Jonathan Crush

Rapid urbanization and food system transformation in Africa have been accompanied by growing food insecurity, reduced dietary diversity and an epidemic of non-communicable disease. While the contribution of wild and indigenous foods (WIF) to the quality of rural household diets has been of longstanding attention, research on their consumption and role amongst urban households is much more recent. This paper…

Pandemic Precarity and Food Insecurity in Urban Ghana During COVID-19

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Bernard Owusu and Jonathan Crush

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban households in the Global South has not yet been adequately explored, despite an emerging consensus that impacts of the pandemic were more severe in urban than rural Africa. This paper addresses the knowledge gap by examining the relationship between pandemic precarity and food insecurity in Ghana’s urban areas during the pandemic in…

Towards a New Food Security Index for Urban Household Food Security

Cameron McCordic, Bruce Frayne, Naomi Sunu and Clare Williamson

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…

Food Clusters, Food Security and the Urban Food System of Northern Namibia

Lawrence Kazembe, Jonathan Crush and Ndeyapo Nickanor

A central feature of the transformation of urban food systems in cities of the Global South is the growing presence of supermarkets and their supply chains, often termed supermarketization or a supermarket revolution. A key issue in the African context is whether supermarkets are a threat to other sources of food including informal sector vendors. Most research on the supermarket…

Affordable Food Shops and Urban Food Security in China

Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Yaya Song, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott and Yuxin Peng

Food subsidies have been widely implemented as part of government policies to mitigate food insecurity among the urban poor. The effectiveness of supply and demand-side subsidies have been a source of debate in the literature. One form of supply-side subsidy designed to make food more affordable to low-income consumers is to offer subsidies to retail outlets. China’s affordable food shop…

Changing Priorities in Urban Food Security Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Bruce Frayne, Truzaar Dordi, Cameron McCordic, Naomi Sunu and Clare Williamson

The study of urban food security has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. This evolution has been punctuated, and catalyzed, by insights into the dynamic transformation of food systems in cities across the Global South. The evolution of this field provides an important vantage point for understanding both the dynamic transformation of urban food systems as well as the…

Assessing Supermarket Patronage in Matola, Mozambique

Cameron McCordic, Bruce Frayne and Naomi Sunu

As an indicator of a broader nutrition transition, the supermarketization of urban food systems in the Global South has become a growing area of research interest. While the rising dominance of supermarkets in urban food systems has been noted in several primate cities in the Global South, there have been few investigations into the spatial and demographic characteristics that may…

State-Led Localization of Food Provisioning and Food Security in Urban China

Taiyang Zhong, Steffanie Scott, Zhenzhong Si and Jonathan Crush

Food localization has been extensively studied and advocated in Western countries, focusing on its oppositional stance to food system globalization, long food supply chains and agribusiness, the disconnect between producers and consumers, and a desire to reconnect urban consumers with small farmers in the hinterland of cities. More recently, these localization models have been taken up by international agencies and…

Food Security and Poverty Reduction Programmes in a Cape Town Community: A Qualitative Study

Sarah Duncan

Despite increased engagement with public programmes, low-income urban South African communities continue to experience high levels of food insecurity. More needs to be known about why progress in poverty alleviation and food security has plateaued (Shisana et al 2013). This discussion paper is based on a qualitative study that investigated how food insecure female-headed households in a Cape Town community…

Urban Food System Governance and Food Security in Namibia

Jonathan Crush, Ndeyapo Nickanor and Lawrence Kazembe

Namibia’s transition to an urban society is occurring extremely rapidly and with it has come a transformation of urban food systems, changes in diets and food consumption patterns, increased undernutrition and overnutrition, and the rapid growth of non-communicable diseases. This paper examines the policy response of the Namibian government to the nutrition transition and double burden of malnutrition with particular…

COVID-19 and Emergency Food Security Policies in Urban China

Taiyang Zhong, Jonathan Crush, Zhenzhong Si and Steffanie Scott

The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to spread worldwide, threatening people’s health as well as their food security. Yet, empirical research investigating its impacts on food security is scant. Limited attention has been paid to the local food security management implications of an infectious disease pandemic. To narrow these gaps, this study investigated the development of emergency food policies in Wuhan…

Urban Food Security and Household Shocks in Nairobi, Kenya

Elizabeth Opiyo Onyango, Jonathan Crush and Samuel Owuor

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…

Hunger, Anger, and Strangers: Precarious Status and Food Insecurity Among Refugees and Asylum Seekers in South Africa

Jennifer Kandjii

This discussion paper analyzes the impact of a multiplicity of actors, policies, and practices on the food security of refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s urban spaces. Building on recent work that focuses on the legal production of illegality, institutionalization of precarity, and the reproduction of bordering practices by the state and citizenry, the paper reviews how South Africa’s…

Food Security Policy Responses to COVID-19 in Wuhan and Nanjing, China

Yi-Shin Chang, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott, Taiyang Zhong and Jonathan Crush

After decades of famine and thousands of deaths caused by food shortages and starvation, China was able to achieve food security for the majority of its population through ensuring food availability. Despite this, during COVID-19, the government needed to heighten their responses to ensure food security and faced several challenges in doing so. This paper analyzes Chinese policies around food…

Change, Challenge and Opportunity in the Indian Urban Food System: Lessons from Bangalore, India

Farhan Rahman

Over the past decade and a half, food policies have undergone much change as decentralization and the reliance on free markets have escalated. Increasing levels of research into the traditional wholesaling system prompted Indian lawmakers to embark upon reform. Using evidence obtained from doctoral research in Bangalore, India, this paper demonstrates that the traditional system is still largely intact. However,…

Revisiting China’s Supermarket Revolution: Evidence from Nanjing City

Yuan Yuan, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang and Jonathan Crush

Like many emerging economies in the Global South, China is experiencing major transformations of its national and local food system characterized by the rise of supermarkets. There has been an ongoing debate on the relationship between the supermarket and the wet market in developing countries. Drawing on data from a city-wide supermarket mapping and surveys conducted in Nanjing in 2019,…

The Role of Infrastructure Access in Urban Household Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Southern Cities

Cameron McCordic, Bruce Frayne and James Sgro

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…

Migration and Food Security in Cities of the Global South

Abel Chikanda, Jonathan Crush and Godfrey Tawodzera

South-South migration is an important, though poorly researched, component of the global migration regime. This discussion paper focuses on the movement of migrants from one country in the Global South to live and work in urban areas of another. While they move from one country to another for a variety of reasons and with variable outcomes, the vast majority of…

Food Retailing Transitions and New Retail Businesses in Nanjing, China

Ning Dai and Zhenzhong Si

China’s food retailing sector is transitioning towards a digitalized consumer society in the context of widespread food safety anxiety. At the forefront of this transition is an innovative form of food retailing called New Retail Businesses (NRBs). Based on field research and interviews with key stakeholders in Nanjing, this study outlines distinctive features of NRBs in contrast to the conventional…

Urban Food Governance Perspectives in Changing African and Southern Cities

Gareth Haysom

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….

Reconceptualizing Informal Economic Governance: Implications from Cape Town, South Africa

Graeme Young

As awareness of the centrality of informality in urban development processes in the Global South is slowly incorporated into the international development agenda, a full understanding of the myriad ways in which informal economic activity is governed has become increasingly urgent. This discussion paper seeks to address this need through an analysis of informal economic governance in Cape Town, South…

Validation of the HCP Survey Tool for Measuring Urban Food Insecurity: An Item Response Theory Approach

Vonai Charamba, Ndeyapo Nickanor and Lawrence N. Kazembe

There is some controversy on the applicability of the summand-based Household Food Security Assessment Score (HFIAS) and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) as measures of food insecurity in urban areas in the Global South. These measures were primarily designed for measurement in rural communities where food insecurity itself was first identified and is still predominantly conceptualized. The objective of the…

The Interface Between Urbanization, Gender and Food in the Global South

Liam Riley and Belinda Dodson

The interface between urbanization, gender and food in the Global South offers a vantage point from which to think through the integrated nature of contemporary development challenges from both the structural elements of urban poverty and the ways in which urban residents navigate their cities. The starting point of this paper is that there is insufficient research from the vantage…

The Food Safety and Food Security Nexus in the Urbanizing Global South

Jodi Koberinski, Zhenzhong Si and Steffanie Scott

Socioeconomic and structural changes in the global food system, driven by rapid urbanization in the Global South, shape the nature and scale of food safety problems as well as the strategies designed to cope with them. These changes create new challenges for ensuring food security, given that food safety is an essential dimension of food security. By reviewing existing studies,…

The Political Economy of Informal Food Vending in Kingston, Jamaica

Robert Kinlocke and Elizabeth Thomas-Hope

Small-scale food enterprises occupy a critical space in the food system of Kingston, Jamaica. While small-scale food retailers serve the entire population, they are disproportionately relied on by poor urban households. The nodes and networks of retailers play an important role in the value and commodity chain by providing access to comparatively cheap food but are often affected by economic…

Containing the Informal Food Sector in Windhoek, Namibia

Lawrence Kazembe, Ndeyapo Nickanor and Jonathan Crush

Policy responses to the growth of the informal food sector in African cities vary from benign neglect to active destruction. The eradication of street food vending is the dominant mode of governance. Alternative approaches that recognize the inevitability of informality and the role of the sector in making food accessible to the urban poor have begun to emerge. One is…

Wet Market Vendor Profits in Nanjing, China: A Spatial Analysis

Xinxian Qi, Taiyang Zhong, Zhenzhong Si, Xianjin Huang and Jonathan Crush

Wet markets play an important role in urban food security in many Asian countries. Existing research pays more attention to the wet market food accessibility of urban residents and less on the business operations and profits of wet market vendors. Based on a survey of 1,119 small food enterprises in Nanjing, this study employs the spatial analytical method Geodetector to…

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