No. 09: Comparing Household Food Security in Cities of the Global South through a Gender Lens

Understanding the determinants of urban food insecurity requires sensitivity to local cultural contexts and taking into account a globally relevant framework for analysis. A gender lens is amenable to this kind of analysis because it is rooted in local configurations of households, livelihoods and consumption patterns, while also being animated by a longstanding global effort to create a world in which men and women are equal. This discussion paper is aimed at academic researchers and development practitioners concerned with urban food insecurity. It demonstrates the usefulness of a gender lens of analysis for generating new insights and questions about household food insecurity in an international context of comparative urban research. The data used in the paper is drawn from the Hungry Cities Partnership household food security baseline surveys in Maputo and Nanjing

No. 11: Urban Food Security, Rural Bias and the Global Development Agenda

This discussion paper sets out the global, African, and South African contexts within which both urban development and food security agendas in Africa are framed. It argues that the pervasive rural bias and anti-urbanism identified in the international and regional food security agendas in the first decade of the 21st century have persisted into the second. In examining whether the last decade has brought any significant changes to the dominant discourse and its accompanying sidelining of urbanization and urban food security in policy debate and formulation, the authors find that there are promising signs for cracks in the edifice but that rural bias remains the dominant feature of current thinking about food security policies. Although researchers have begun to press for the urban to be included in the food security agenda, and food to be included in the urban agenda, there has been limited policy uptake to date at the international level and very little at the municipal level. If urban food security is addressed in a substantive manner, it will probably be indirectly, through the actions of the influential global nutrition lobby

No. 10: Gender and Food Insecurity in Southern African Cities

This gender analysis of the findings of AFSUN’s baseline survey of poor urban households in eleven cities in Southern Africa in 2008 and 2009 has implications for urban, national and regional policy interventions aimed at reducing urban food insecurity. By comparing female-centred and other households, light is shed both on the determinants of urban food insecurity – which relate fundamentally to income, employment and education – and on the manifest gender inequalities in access to the largely income-based entitlements to food in the city. These insights can be used to design and implement practical and strategic interventions that could simultaneously and synergistically address both gender inequality and food insecurity. Practically, and in the immediate term, interventions such as social grants and food aid, if targeted at the poorest households, will automatically capture a greater proportion of female-centred households. Enhancing food security for the urban poor requires education and training, job creation, and income generation strategies, ensuring equitable access to such opportunities for women and girls. Supporting and enabling women’s engagement in such activities and enterprises – including in food production and marketing – has the potential to strengthen food security at the same time as reducing gender inequality, in a form of virtuous cycle

No. 15: The Food Security Implications of Gendered Access to Education and Employment in Maputo

The multiple linkages between gender and household food security in cities have been observed in diverse settings, at multiple scales, and through a variety of disciplinary lenses. The Hungry Cities Partnership is rooted in the importance of inclusive growth of cities, which includes a fundamental concern with genderbased injustices that reduce inclusivity, sustainability and food security by underpinning structural poverty. This discussion paper is motivated by the gap in policy-ready quantitative data needed to identify the ways in which gender inequality, food insecurity, and public policy are interconnected. Analysis of the 2014 survey of household food security in Maputo identified female headship as a household attribute closely associated with food insecurity and yet the employment and education status of the head largely mitigated the effect of female headship on food security. Using household survey data, this investigation defines the extent to which the relationship between the sex of the household head and food insecurity appears to be conditionally dependent upon employment and education. The findings provide further impetus to urban policy makers to operationalize gender-equality goals. For Hungry Cities researchers, it provides a model for gender-based analysis of household food security in other cities

No. 22: The Return of Food: Poverty and Urban Food Security in Zimbabwe after the Crisis

The nadir of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis in 2008 coincided with the implementation of a baseline household food security survey in Harare by AFSUN. This survey found that households in lowincome urban areas in Zimbabwe’s capital were far worse off in terms of all the food insecurity and poverty indicators than households in the other 10 Southern African cities surveyed by AFSUN. The central question addressed in this report is whether food security in Zimbabwe’s urban centres has improved. AFSUN conducted a follow-up survey in 2012 that allows for direct longitudinal comparisons of continuity and change. The status of household food security in low-income neighbourhoods in Harare was improved in 2012 relative to 2008, and yet persistently high rates of severe food insecurity demonstrate that the daily need to access adequate food continued to be a major challenge. The key lesson for policymakers is that even in the context of overall economic improvement, food insecurity remains endemic among the poorest segments of the urban population. Households are already accustomed to drawing on resources outside of the formal economy and improvements in employment income have not reversed that trend. These alternative livelihood strategies should therefore be considered as a normal part of urban life and supported with state resources that can improve access to food for the most marginalized groups

The Return of Food: Poverty and Urban Food Security in Zimbabwe after the Crisis

The nadir of Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis in 2008 coincided with the implementation of a baseline household food security survey in Harare by AFSUN. This survey found that households in lowincome urban areas in Zimbabwe’s capital were far worse off in terms of all the food insecurity and poverty indicators than households in the other 10 Southern African cities surveyed by AFSUN. The central question addressed in this report is whether food security in Zimbabwe’s urban centres has improved. AFSUN conducted a follow-up survey in 2012 that allows for direct longitudinal comparisons of continuity and change. The status of household food security in low-income neighbourhoods in Harare was improved in 2012 relative to 2008, and yet persistently high rates of severe food insecurity demonstrate that the daily need to access adequate food continued to be a major challenge. The key lesson for policymakers is that even in the context of overall economic improvement, food insecurity remains endemic among the poorest segments of the urban population. Households are already accustomed to drawing on resources outside of the formal economy and improvements in employment income have not reversed that trend. These alternative livelihood strategies should therefore be considered as a normal part of urban life and supported with state resources that can improve access to food for the most marginalized groups

No. 27: Food Security in Africa\u27s Secondary Cities: No. 1 Mzuzu, Malawi

This report marks the first stage of AFSUN’s goal of expanding knowledge about urban food systems and experiences of household food insecurity in secondary African cities. It contributes to an understanding of poverty and sustainability in Mzuzu, Malawi, through the lens of household food security. The focus on food as an urban issue not only speaks to the development challenges presented by urbanization, but it also brings a fresh perspective to debates about food security in Malawi. The urban setting highlights the changing food system in Malawi where people in rural and urban areas are increasingly reliant on cash income to buy food. The report’s key findings include that the most vulnerable households are those without a formal wage income, households headed by older people, especially older women, and households that are not able to produce food in the rural areas. The research also shows that the food system is dynamic and diverse, with households accessing food from a variety of formal and informal food sources and relying on rural-urban linkages for urban survival. Urban and rural agriculture are important features of the food system, but there is little evidence that these are the “self-help” responses to poverty that advocates for urban agriculture in Africa sometimes imply

Gendered geographies of food security in Blantyre, Malawi

This dissertation addresses the need for a deeper understanding of how gender roles and identities shape household access to food in African cities. The case study of Blantyre, Malawi, is similar to other medium-sized cities in southern Africa where the colonial legacies of structural poverty shape contemporary food insecurity, intra-household gender relations, and urban development. Five conceptual threads run throughout the dissertation and draw together the overarching theoretical and empirical contributions of the research. The first conceptual thread is that urban food insecurity in Blantyre is characterised by a growing level of precarity and vulnerability. Informal, seasonal, and inconsistent incomes often fail to provide reliable access to food, resulting in scarcity at daily, monthly, or seasonal intervals. Secondly, this precarity has a gendered impact on household food security. Women command lower incomes than men, but many also have access to resources such as customary farmland. The geographical focus of the research highlights the effects of gendered mobilities on accessing these resources and on accessing food. The third thread focuses on theoretical problems of African urbanism, particularly regarding the interconnectedness of urban and rural households and the blurred distinction between urban and rural spaces. Access to rural resources, including physical access and hence mobility, is crucial for many low-income households to be food secure. The fourth thread draws attention to political economic issues of local governance, urban planning, and Malawi\u27s production-oriented food security strategy. Recent policies have undermined urban food security and low-income urban households have insufficient political influence over policies that directly shape their livelihoods. The final thread traces the colonial legacies embedded in this political economy, with particular attention paid to the effects of the geographical legacies of colonialism on Blantyre\u27s built environment. A feminist postcolonial epistemology guided the planning, execution, and analysis of the qualitative methods that empirically ground this dissertation. The result is a layered and richly contextualised demonstration of the centrality of gender and power relations at multiple scales in shaping household food security in Blantyre. The dissertation makes a vital contribution to understanding the urban context of food security, changing gender roles, and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa

Children’s Geography and the Everyday Lives of Orphans in Malawi

Malawi has almost one million orphans; half of whom were orphaned because of AIDS. The situation is often framed as an ‘orphan crisis,’ which is a problematic concept because of the shifting definitions of orphanhood, the cultural connotations of abandonment and helplessness associated with orphanhood, and the diversity of causes and experiences of orphanhood. This thesis sets out to challenge assumptions about childhood and domesticity that are often embedded in discussions of orphanhood in Malawi through a methodological approach grounded in children’s geography that views children as social actors. The research, which is focused on orphans’ daily lives and perspectives, suggests that most orphans receive good psychosocial care through kinship networks, although serious problems related to poverty are commonplace in some areas. These problems may not be the result of orphanhood; rather they are linked to broader processes that help to create and perpetuate child poverty in Malawi

No. 11: Urban Food Security, Rural Bias and the Global Development Agenda

This discussion paper sets out the global, African, and South African contexts within which both urban development and food security agendas in Africa are framed. It argues that the pervasive rural bias and anti-urbanism identified in the international and regional food security agendas in the first decade of the 21st century have persisted into the second. In examining whether the last decade has brought any significant changes to the dominant discourse and its accompanying sidelining of urbanization and urban food security in policy debate and formulation, the authors find that there are promising signs for cracks in the edifice but that rural bias remains the dominant feature of current thinking about food security policies. Although researchers have begun to press for the urban to be included in the food security agenda, and food to be included in the urban agenda, there has been limited policy uptake to date at the international level and very little at the municipal level. If urban food security is addressed in a substantive manner, it will probably be indirectly, through the actions of the influential global nutrition lobby