ABOUT THE HCP

The Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) is an international network of partner organizations which focuses on the relationships between rapid urbanization, urban food systems and migration in the Global South.

The HCP conducts collaborative research, training and advocacy with the objective of providing innovative solutions to the challenge of building sustainable cities and policies and programs that promote food security in migrant origin and destination communities and corridors.

Between 2014 and 2020, HCP operated in China, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique and South Africa and was funded by the International Partnerships for Sustainable Societies (IPaSS) program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). In 2021, HCP was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant for a new seven-year project entitled South-South Migration and Migrant Food Security in the Global South (the MiFOOD Project). New HCP partner countries include Ecuador, Ghana, Namibia, Qatar and Singapore. New international partners include the FAO, IFPRI, ILO, IOM, MIDEQ and SDSN.

The main objectives of the HCP are to:

  • Examine the levels and determinants of all four dimensions of food security — availability, access, utilization and stability — in a range of cities across the Global South and the relationships between food insecurity, poverty and urban food systems;
  • Generate a significant body of comparative, inter-disciplinary knowledge on the organization, structure and potential for inclusive growth in the informal food economy and implications for food security in cities of the Global South;
  • Analyse the implications of supermarket competition for entrepreneurship, innovation, job creation and inclusive growth in the urban informal food economy;
  • Critically assess opportunities for women and youth to be incorporated into urban food systems as entrepreneurs and employees with decent jobs;
  • Assess national, regional and municipal policies that enable or constrain enterprise development, entrepreneurship and innovation in the informal food economy;
  • Build the institutional capacity of research organisations and networks in the South to conduct collaborative, policy-oriented research on urban food systems; and
  • Mentor and train graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to conduct rigorous, high-impact research on urban food security and inclusive growth.

The HCP aims to build a policy-oriented knowledge platform to positively impact on the regulatory environment governing urban food systems in partner cities as well as influence the emerging global development agendas on urbanization, food security and poverty alleviation.

The current partner cities in the HCP are:

Associate cities:

  • Harare in Zimbabwe
  • Windhoek in Namibia

The Hungry Cities Partnership is currently funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

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