Pathways of food: mobility and food transfers in Southern African cities

Abstract

Using recent multi-city survey data, the analysis demonstrates that informal rural–urban and urban–urban food transfers make important contributions to the food budgets of chronically food-insecure, poor households in the rapidly urbanising cities of Southern Africa. The paper outlines why dealing with food and nutrition security is a priority and multi-faceted urban development challenge, and argues for development policy and planning that seeks to enhance these widely prevalent household linkages by supporting urban (and rural) livelihoods. Given the links between food and nutrition security on the one hand, and human development and wealth generation on the other, using a food lens is one useful way of devising approaches to urban development that are people-centred and pro-poor, which is important in the Southern African context of widespread rural–urban migration and pervasive urban poverty.