RUNNING OUR CITIES to FILL the FOOD GAP by Leonie Joubert with the Consuming Urban Poverty Team Photographs by Samantha Reinders, with Masixole Feni

Tomatoes & taxi ranks

RUNNING OUR CITIES TO FILL THE FOOD GAP by Leonie Joubert with the Consuming Urban Poverty team Photographs by Samantha Reinders, with Masixole Feni

i TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

ii 1 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks Running our cities to fill the food gap

First published in 2018 by Authors the African Centre for Cities, Leonie Joubert, with Jane Battersby University of Cape Town and Vanessa Watson All rights reserved Tomatoes & ISBN 978-0-620-80698-5 Contributing authors Paul Opiyo, Percy Toriro, Fadzai African Centre for Cities Muramba, Robyn Bowden, Robyn School of Architecture, Planning and Park-Ross, Alison Pulker, Jo Hunter Geomatics Adams and Fridah Siyanga-Tembo taxi ranks Room 2.11, Level 2, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building Photographs Upper Campus, University of Cape by Samantha Reinders, all except for Town, Rondebosch, 7701 those by Masixole Feni (pages 4, 16, 81- South Africa 98, 134, 139- bottom image, 142- bottom Tel: +27 650 5903 centre image, 157), Jane Battersby www.africancentreforcities.net (pages 58, 121- top right image), running our cities Fadzai Muramba (page 53- top left, top This book is based on research right and bottom left image) and undertaken by the Consuming Urban Robyn Park-Ross (pages 92, 130-131) to FILL THE FOOD GAP Poverty project (formally named Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Production Coordination Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa) Robyn Park-Ross and Alma Viviers based at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. This project Design is funded under the ESRC-DFID Joint Idea in a Forest Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (Poverty in Urban Spaces theme). Proofreading Linda Martindale

Print & Binding Hansa Digital & Litho Printing (Pty) Ltd, GraphiCraft (Pty) Ltd by Leonie Joubert with the Consuming Urban Poverty team Photographs by Samantha Reinders

Consuming Urban Poverty with Masixole Feni

2 3 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS CONTENTS

Foreword By Professor Edgar Pieterse 7

Introduction 9

Chapter 1 The Hungry Season Hunger feeds poverty, and poverty feeds hunger: the many faces of urban struggle. 15

Chapter 2 Big is Beautiful Staying trim and healthy in an African city is about more than just making good food and lifestyle choices: why city living leaves many heavy, hungry, and sick. 37

Chapter 3 Cinderella Markets Supermarkets and shopping malls are often seen as the poster children of the modern African city, but the informal economy brings food and jobs to our cities. 57

Chapter 4 Chicken Pieces Chicken is one of South Africa’s most popular proteins, and the pathways along which poultry travels to a city like Cape Town are complex: a series of photo essays. 81

Chapter 5 Kapenta Road No city is an island, surviving as a self-contained economy that meets all its own needs: the story of fish reveals the complex global and regional trade routes that feed into our cities’ food markets. 99 Feathered friends

Chicken is a favourite Chapter 6 White Elephant protein in many African Where is local government in terms of shaping cities so that people cities, and there’s a are not just free from hunger, but properly nourished, too? 123 thriving informal economy that feeds Chapter 7 Myth Busting for a Better Food System poultry meat into our shops and roadside What the evidence on the ground tells us about cities’ food gaps, stalls. and how we can plan for well-fed, well-nourished communities. 137

4 5 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS Foreword

African societies and economies are caught up in the intersection of at least five megatrends: population growth, urbanisation, climate change, migration, and the knot of food, water and energy insecurity. Mainstream economists are often celebratory about the fact that Africa demonstrates the fastest rate of urbanisation because it supposedly signals good economic fortune. It is premised on the evidence that sustained economic growth has never taken place in the absence of urbanisation. However, this narrative fails to account for the specificities of African urbanisation.

Urbanisation processes in most African con- drive much of these processes. It reveals urban By professor texts are marked predominantly by informality living as marked by ‘convenience’, but is ulti- edgar pieterse, in terms of how people live, secure their liveli- mately soulless. For example, urban dwellers hoods, and experience governance. One conse- are forced to forego access to nutritional sta- Director of the quence of this is that most urban areas are poor- ples in favour of processed foods that fuel our African Centre ly planned, unevenly regulated, and marked by obesity epidemic. for Cities (ACC), urban management practices that favour elites This publication also demonstrates how the University of Cape and undermine urban majorities who struggle logic of convenience not only leads to a change to put food on the table, and access a decent job, in diet, but also promotes the ‘supermarketi- Town healthcare, and education. It is in this context sation’ of food consumption, with dire conse- that we need grounded insights into how real quences for local economies, diets, social net- African cities actually operate and how people works, and cultural dynamism. Yet, so often, the navigate repressive dynamics. forms of urban life and living, such as the drive The work of the urban food system scholars for ever more shopping malls, are projected as in the ACC provides invaluable evidence and unavoidable and unstoppable. perspective on the specificities of urbanisation This publication challenges this and pro- in three secondary African cities – the kind of vides an agenda for public debate. It suggests context where the majority of urban Africans that we can, and must, connect international find themselves. Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks is a trade policy with local regulations if we want to lively publication that seeks to extend that re- alter the course of urban livelihoods and wellbe- search into a larger public domain. It epitomises ing for the urban poor. It offers a series of prac- the commitment of the ACC to conduct excel- tical ideas on how to rethink food and eating as Hand-made cities lent academic research and simultaneously en- part of a system and not simply matters of indi- rich the commons through user-friendly publi- vidual consumption or cultural preference. In- Most urban African cations that speak to the public at large. stead, Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks challenges all of life is shaped by Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks provides an inti- us to consume reflectively and act justly. It de- ‘informality’, but city mate account of what poor urban Africans eat; mands a fundamental remaking of governance, management often where they source their food; how their diets and calls for new forms of urban citizenship that favours the elites and and nutritional intake changes with urbani- are rooted in more healthy, pleasurable and in- forgets the experience of sation; and the corrosive capitalist logics that clusive patterns of living and movement. the urban majority.

6 7 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS Introduction

This is not a book about food, even though it in Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the may look that way. Rather, it is about the cities Kisumu Local Interaction Platform (KLIP), a we live in and how they shape the food we eat. research and policy knowledge hub facilitating Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks looks beyond the fresh urban research in Kisumu, Kenya. produce that leaves farmers’ gates, and consid- Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks is based on the team’s ers how that food gets from the farm and onto main findings, following three years of immers- our plates. It looks at the many forces and agents ing themselves in three southern and east Afri- that shape how much that food eventually costs, can cities: Kitwe, a mining town in the Zambian and what form it takes once it gets to our plates. Copperbelt, about 350 kilometres north of the And it explores whether this food leaves us feel- capital, Lusaka; the inland port city of Kisumu, ing full or hungry, and if it nourishes us in the on the banks of Lake Victoria in Kenya; and Ep- long term. worth, an informal settlement on the edge of the On its journey from farm to fork, food may Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The book also lo- stay in its original form – say, as a bundle of cal- cates itself in Cape Town, South Africa, where the ories and nutrients in the shape of a fresh, ripe team has done additional supporting research. tomato. Or, through some industrial wizardry, it may get repurposed into something that’s more food-like, and less food – such as a handful of Surrounded by food, awash maize kernels that have been transformed into with hunger a cheese-flavoured crisp snack. There is an ocean of invisible undercurrents When it comes to food, cities can be deceptive that tugs us this way and that in today’s urban places. We appear to be surrounded by food, yet food system; forces that nudge us subtly as we hunger, overnutrition and undernutrition haunt decide what type of food we’ll lift from the food millions of sub-Saharan Africans daily. Making seller’s shelf: will we choose the tomato over the sure our fellow citizens are food secure – mean- maize snack, and why do we make our decision? ing that they have consistent access within Will it satisfy our hunger, and will we be well their communities to wholesome, healthy, af- nourished over time? fordable and culturally appropriate food that is Most specifically, this book is about the many safe to eat – needs more than just making sure factors that shape a poorer person’s life in an that our farmers are shipping enough food from African city, and how those express themselves their farms. in the foods they eat and in the wellness of their If governments hope to create cities where Enough for all bodies. people live without hunger, or the fear of hun- The Consuming Urban Poverty (CUP) re- ger, they need to plan in such a way that allows Filling the food gap search project started in 2015 when a group of our complicated food systems to work for eve- in our hungry cities urban geographers, sociologists, economists ryone’s benefit. This means they need to have a calls for more than and planners from the African Centre for Cities clear understanding of the political, economic just having a country’s (ACC) at the University of Cape Town teamed and social forces at play across many different farmers growing enough up with colleagues at the Copperbelt University scales: global, regional, and local. crops.

8 9 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS INTRODUCTION

ThE research cities This project’s findings layer together a series of road maps that reflect some of the deeper There is an ocean of invisible dimensions of the forces that shape how food moves into our cities, in what form, and whether undercurrents that tugs us this or not it’s affordable and accessible. The CUP team wrote up their findings in an way and that in today’s urban food academic book Urban Food Systems Govern- ance and Poverty in African Cities1, published system; forces that nudge us subtly by Routledge, which travels through Kitwe, Kis- as we decide what type of food we’ll umu and Epworth to chart them in a way that will help governments better understand the lift from the food seller’s shelf Kisumu cities and their food systems, and allow them to make better management choices. The team Nairobi also wanted these important lessons to reach beyond the halls of academia, hence Tomatoes other formal outlets, often marginalising infor- & Taxi Ranks, a collection of stories written in mal food traders either through passive neglect a language that policymakers, civil society or- or outright exclusion. However, informal food Kenya ganisations, the media, and the general public trading is not only one of the most important can understand. sources of food for the urban poor, but also an The book starts by zooming in on a typical important employer of people in cities who city-living family in Chapter 1. It looks at what would otherwise have few other options for it’s like to tap into the food system when people earning a living that allows them to buy food. are cash-strapped and making constant trade- By tracing the pathways along which chick- offs within the grip of a budget that never quite en, an important source of protein, reaches our goes far enough to cover the family’s needs for plates, Chapter 4 asks how much we are actual- Kitwe basics, such as electricity or water, school fees, ly allowed to know about where our food comes transport, and food. It considers how poverty from. Four evocative photo essays follow the drives hunger, and how hunger drives poverty. various value chains of chicken in Cape Town. Lusaka Chapter 2 tackles another misleading trend, Chapter 5 tracks the journey from farm to which this book tries to address: in the devel- fork in a globalised world, which is very differ- Zambia oping world, as people move into cities, they ent to how food moved about through short value tend to start eating more processed, ‘industrial’ chains a century or two ago. Today, the fish being foods. With that comes weight gain, and with it traded in a market in Kitwe, Zambia, could just the appearance of affluence and an abundance as easily have come from a Chinese port, as from of food. Yet, obesity is an expression of another a fishing net that trawled the shores of a nearby Where in the world? Harare form of malnutrition, and comes with a cascade lake by a local fisherman. Local governments of ill health that is a tremendous burden, not need to understand that food travels into their The Consuming Urban Epworth only on the individual and their family, but also cities across global, regional, and local scales, and Poverty team did Pretoria on the state, which bears the healthcare costs that all these trade routes need to be nurtured their research in three of an increasingly overweight population. Here, in different ways to allow residents to access af- African cities, with we look at why our cities leave us heavy and sick, fordable sources of nutrition. They also have to supporting research and it’s not because people are lazy or greedy, as remember that many of the forces along those done in Cape Town, Zimbabwe Cape Town many still believe. different trade routes are at work in areas outside to better understand Legend Chapter 3 looks at the different kinds of re- the jurisdiction of the city’s administration. how the many facets of Study site tailers that bring us our food. Supermarkets are In Chapter 6 we look at the question of gov- urban poverty express National capital the poster children of the modern African city, ernance and how the choices made by local gov- themselves through our and local government tends to favour these and ernment decision-makers impact on the kinds relationship with food. Project home

10 11 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS INTRODUCTION

If governments hope to create cities where people live without hunger, or the fear of hunger, they need to plan in such a way that allows our complicated food systems to work for everyone’s benefit epworth Kitwe is an informal settlement on is a mining town in the the edge of the Zimbabwean of food available to city dwellers. Poor govern- rect line from farm to fork. Food comes from a Zambian Copperbelt, about capital of Harare. In the ment planning, policies and decision-making myriad of different sources, and travels along 350 kilometres north of the minds of city managers, this can result in people going hungry or not getting complex distribution routes. Some of this food capital, Lusaka. The priva- largely unplanned neigh- adequate nutrition in the long term, and this stays as it is in its original, natural form; some tisation of the mines here KISUMU bourhood falls short of what Cape chapter explains why. gets transformed into another version of itself. in the early 1990s resulted it means to be a ‘world-class’ Chapter 7 tackles some of the older and Much of it passes through a network of ship- in widespread job losses. is Kenya’s third-largest city. city. They’d prefer a suburb town more widespread ideas about how the food sys- ping, processing, packaging, warehousing and By the early 2000s, unem- This inland port city on the where there’s no ‘informal- tem works. It examines the evidence emerging cooling, before eventually being displayed in a ployment was at 45%. This banks of Lake Victoria is at ity’, be it housing, ways of is the oldest modern city in from recent research in the site cities, and asks shop or served to the customer. Food isn’t only shrank household incomes the confluence of a major making a living, or anything South Africa, and the legis- if those stories still hold true or are helpful to taken to private homes to be stored and eaten significantly, and shaped the transport hub of the Great that hints at being ‘rural’ lative capital of the country. making informed city planning. later, but is also served in hotels and restaurants, kinds of foods people are Lakes region, and a key or ‘backward’. The state’s It is also the location of the or in corner cafés and at street-side barbecues, eating. The informal sector trading centre. Develop- vision of the modern city is Consuming Urban Poverty food stalls, and canteens. Some of it is discarded has since become an impor- ment took off in the 2000s, out of step with the reality Project (CUP) team’s insti- No city is an island and sent into the messy tail-end of the food sys- tant source of employment. following two decades of on the ground, researchers tutional home at the African A city is not an island, and its food system isn’t tem where wasted food goes to decay. There are The population is now up to economic stagnation, and say. The population was Centre for Cities, University a discrete or neat web of routes along which our a host of social, political, legal, regulatory, eco- half a million, and the econ- today Kisumu’s popula- nudging towards 170 000 of Cape Town, where food food moves, or along which the people who ship, nomic, logistical, and cultural forces at play at omy is still fragile, although tion is about half a million. at the last census in 2012, is one of the key areas of process, or sell it to us, operate. The take-home every point in this complex system. recent Chinese investment Half of the population is with just under a quarter research. While the CUP message for city managers, decision-makers and Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks offers a chance to in mining, hotels, malls and estimated to live in absolute of employable adults (23%) project’s primary research planners is that if we want to make sure that the appreciate the lived experience of many city- stadiums is bringing some poverty, compared to the having work in the formal was done in the other three people in our cities are able to live hunger-free, dwelling people in sub-Saharan Africa and the growth. national average of 29%, and sector. The informal econ- cities, additional supporting well nourished in the long term, and able to push extent to which they’re touched by poverty, Scoop by scoop unemployment in Kisumu is omy provides most people fieldwork took place in and back against the deprivations of poverty, we have and to see how that expresses itself in the food high, at 30%. with their livelihoods. around Cape Town. This to understand that addressing food and nutri- they’re able to buy and eat. It is a study of the in- Informal food trading work further unearths ways tional security is not about getting farmers to terplay between the booming supermarket sys- can be more flexible in which urban poverty put more calories into the system. Nor is it about tem and its ‘Cinderella’ sister, the informal food than formal retailing, expresses itself through hoping that if we just give everyone the right in- economy. It maps the many routes that our food allowing customers to people’s relationship with formation about what a healthy diet is, they will follows in order to reach our plates in the city, negotiate portion sizes food. make the right choices for their families. and it questions the role that city managers play and prices that match Our farmers’ yields don’t magically find their in ensuring that we get the food we need in order their budgets, as with way onto our dinner plates, or follow a neat, di- to stay vital and healthy. this dried fish.

12 13 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

1 The Hungry Season

When a family goes hungry in the city, we often think this is because our farmers haven’t delivered enough food to the market. Or we see it as a failure of the person, which happens in the privacy of their own home and is their responsibility to solve. But if we want to fill the food gap in African cities, we must understand that many city dwellers are hungry because they are poor. And they’re poor because their food choices are shaped by powerful social, economic, political and geographical forces that operate at local, regional and global levels, all of which collide in their neighbourhoods as they try to put food on the table.

Making do

When a family doesn’t have water or electricity at home, or kitchen appliances, or enough time to cook a wholesome meal, that also eats into their nutritional wellbeing. Urban poverty, and food poverty, isn’t just about being short of cash.

14 15 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

The hungry season for Mai Nyemba* (names have been changed) and her family usually Being able to put healthy, comes in January and February each year. This is a tough financial time for most people: the ex- nutritious food on the table, day cesses of the holiday season are over, budgets are thin, and then the high start-of-year expenses after day, calls for a steady flow arrive. It is not called ‘Janu-worry’ for nothing. This is also the rainy season in Zimbabwe, of cash into the household, which though, and can bring an occasional unexpect- means having a job, a small ed boon for Mai’s husband Munyaradzi. He is a self-employed panel beater and wet roads mean business, or a social grant more traffic accidents, which bring a few extra repair jobs into his small shop in Epworth, just outside the capital, Harare. But this didn’t help them out in January 2015, was noon, and there was a shebeen across the which was a particularly tough year, Mai told road where a group of youngsters was knocking Amanda Dendera one winter’s day in June 2016. back a few chilly beers, and some young mothers Dendera, a researcher with the Department of were hanging about with their kids in tow. Den- Geography and Environmental Sciences at the dera remembers how nervous they were when University of Zimbabwe, was visiting people in she wandered over to talk with them, thinking Epworth to gauge whether or not they had been she might be an official who would shut down able to feed their families in recent months, and, the illegal drinking hole. The vacant ground if not, why that had been the case. across the dirt road in front of Mai’s house was “There was no food in the house at the time. piled with garbage, since many locals use this I had to go to my cousin’s place here in Ep- site as an illegal rubbish dump. worth and ask for food,” Mai told her, later ad- When Mai described her family’s situation, it mitting that she wasn’t on good terms with her seemed that things were alright for the moment; family, which meant that asking them for help it had been several months since the hungry was difficult. season had visited their home. Her husband was “She gave me two kilograms of rice, cooking earning an income, and their young son was at oil, sugar and salt,” Mai recalled. “She didn’t ex- a nearby crèche where the children were being pect me to pay it back though. This happened fed two meals a day. because Munyaradzi was not getting a lot of The notion of the ‘hungry season’ comes from jobs, so our income was very low.” an era when society was mostly agricultural Before she had their son, Mai had also been and living primarily off the land. If the previous employed – she had a job at a tailor in nearby year’s yield had been abundant, and this year’s Msasa – and she and her husband had been able harvest had come in on time, then a small farm- Feast or fast to buy everything they needed. ing community would have plenty of food in “But the problems started in 2012. Both of their pantries. There would be no lean period be- The ‘hungry season’ in a us were unemployed, and we had a new mouth tween the previous harvest running out and the modern city is that time to feed.” current year’s harvest coming in from the fields. of the week, or month, Their situation became progressively worse But if the previous year’s crop had been poor, or or year, when a family until January 2015, when Mai had to beg for this year’s rains arrived late, food stocks would runs short of cash food from her relative. run low and the lean season might stretch on for and can’t draw on the When Dendera met Mai in 2016, the young weeks as people waited for their crops to ripen. calories in a system that family of three was living in a single rented The reality is that by 2030, half of Africa’s seems to be overflowing room in a two-bedroomed house in Epworth. It people will be living in cities and will no longer with food.

16 17 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

What is hunger? Reframing an old problem

Being free from hunger is not the same standing of the complexity of the food as being food secure, something which system and how these intersect in the the global development community is city context. starting to articulate more clearly. According to the Food and Agricul- Food security, the United Nations ture Organization (FAO) of the United now says, isn’t about people just taking Nations in a report produced by its in enough calories, which really only expert panel on food losses and waste3, addresses immediate hunger and the a food system “gathers all the elements pain of an empty belly. Rather, food (environment, people, inputs, process- security is about people having sus- es, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) tained access to a nutritious diet for and activities that relate to the produc- their optimum health. This phrasing tion, processing, distribution, prepara- is significant, because it acknowledges tion and consumption of food, and the the complexity of the relationship outputs of these activities, including between food and poverty, say Dr Jane socio-economic and environmental Battersby and Prof Vanessa Watson, outcomes”. This makes a connection lead researchers on the CUP project2. between food security, the food sys- This way of reframing the issue moves tem, and the “wider set of systems in away from seeing hunger as an indica- which food operates”4. l tor of poverty, and rather considers how the lack of ongoing access to a nutritious diet is a driver of poverty. More than a It is well documented that a chron- mouthful ic lack of food and adequate nutrition can impact on a person’s physical, The food system is social, emotional and cognitive devel- about more than opment throughout their life, the CUP just the calories or researchers write in their findings, nutrients flowing which highlights the need for ongoing, though it; it’s about the many people at work sustained good nutrition if a country in the system, and the hopes to grapple with poverty and interconnected processes development challenges. and infrastructure Bringing the issues of urban de- associated with growing, velopment and poverty together with harvesting, shipping, hunger and food insecurity, in order processing, packaging, to govern cities in a way that leads to cooling, heating, cooking, sustainable growth and the eradica- retailing, and disposing tion of poverty, calls for a deep under- of that food.

18 19 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

be at the immediate mercy of the types of natural events that bring the hungry season to rural But how does a diet that’s low in farming families. City dwellers live in an environment where the modern food system keeps a diverse, healthy, nutritious foods steady flow of calories moving into their neighbourhoods most of the time. keep people shackled in their The hungry season nevertheless still stalks many homes, only it comes at different times, poverty? For babies, a shortage of and for different reasons. Understanding the proper nutrition can shadow them new and varied forces that bring lean times to city-living families is key if we are to fill the hun- for the rest of their lives ger gap in our fast-growing cities. This is what Dendera was trying to understand when she sat in Mai’s rented room and asked her if her family had gone hungry in the of tradeoffs in a cash-strapped home: should she previous year. Dendera was doing this study as spend what little money she has on food for the part of the Consuming Urban Poverty (CUP) family today, or should she pay the school fees, collaboration, which saw teams of researchers knowing that educating her children is a form of visit Epworth in Zimbabwe, Kitwe in Zambia insurance against hunger? After all, an educated and Kisumu in Kenya in 2016 to better under- child will eventually be able to find a job and stand the link between food, hunger, and pov- support the family. erty in the city context. This is the reality of the new hungry season Since most of southern Africa’s urbanisation for many in Africa. There may be plenty of food and growth are expected to take place in ‘sec- in circulation in the modern city, but is it di- ondary’ cities just like these, where the popu- verse, nutritious and safe to eat? Do people have lation might range from about 100 000 up to access to it? Being able to put healthy, nutritious several million5 (the city’s economy might also food on the table, day after day, calls for a steady amount to between 10% and 50% of the largest flow of cash into the household, which means city in that country), this is where most coun- having a job, a small business, or a social grant. tries’ development challenges will be concen- Anything that pinches off that regular cash flow trated in coming decades. will bring its own unique hungry season. Through the lens of food and hunger, the CUP The Lived Poverty Index (LPI) is one of the researchers are now able to show how the notion yardsticks that the CUP researchers used to of the hungry season is helpful in understanding measure the extent of poverty among the people the complex nature of poverty in Africa’s cities. they interviewed. This is an approach that asks participants to reflect on how often they have gone without the basics during the preceding City life Poverty drives hunger; year. Did they have enough food? What about hunger drives poverty fuel for cooking, or energy for lighting and other Urban poverty can be household needs? Did they have water in the measured in whether January is also a lean time for widow Anesu home? How about adequate healthcare when someone has the basics Mukwanda* and her nine dependents – five of they needed it? What was their overall income at home: food, fuel – or her own children and four of her late sister’s – during this time? other form of energy – mostly because of school fees. She lives in Kit- When the researchers put these questions for cooking and lighting we, Zambia, and, like so many of the people that to their study participants, they found that the or powering appliances, the CUP researchers spoke with during their day-to-day experience of most families who live water, healthcare, and a field work, hers is a story about the daily grind this close to the breadline on a limited, often basic income.

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Smaller cities are development hubs

The dynamics of growth and urbani- cities are still not well known. It’s sation in Africa’s bigger cities have clear that service delivery is worse in been relatively well documented. smaller municipalities than in larger What is happening in smaller cities, urban centres, and there is generally a however, is not as clearly understood. higher rate of poverty and infant and Yet this is where most of Africa’s child mortality, according to Shifa and growth is going to take place in com- Borel-Saladin. ing decades. According to the United The take-home message for urban Nations’ 2015 estimate of urbanisa- planners is that it is not enough to tion trends in World Urbanisation hope that economic growth alone Prospects6, by 2014 half of the world’s will address poverty in these cities, combined urban population lived in particularly where there is higher cities where the populations are fewer inequality, which stifles the “poverty than half a million; by 2030, most of reducing effect of economic growth”. the world’s city-dwelling population The state must proactively plan for, is expected to be in cities that have a and invest in, infrastructure and job population of up to a million people. creation so that it can harness this Most of the fastest-growing cities in rapid urbanisation for positive urban the world will be cities that are this development that creates sustainable size, and are in Africa and Asia, write cities. l Dr Muna Shifa and Dr Jacqueline Borel-Saladin in the CUP book Urban Food Systems Governance and Poverty Cities as in African Cities7. development hubs This means that these cities will become development hubs: it’s where Most of Africa’s growth a concentration of the region’s devel- is expected to happen in opment challenges are to be found, smaller cities, meaning but also where some of the greatest development challenges will be concentrated opportunities lie. Secondary cities here. This also allows – where the population is usually be- opportunities to tween about 100 000 and up to several leapfrog past some of million – have the potential for urban the problems that have growth that is inclusive and can tackle mega-cities in various poverty issues. forms of developmental But the dynamics of these smaller gridlock.

22 23 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

unreliable budget, is one where survival means project10. Whether or not a family has access to a constant series of rational, calculated trade- water and sanitation at home, or whether they offs. They must split what little cash they have have a fridge or some other kind of temperature- between the rent, electricity, or slightly cheaper stable storage for food, determines their level charcoal or paraffin, water, school fees, and food. of food poverty. It is also shaped by spatial is- By bringing the LPI number together with a sues, such as the distance a family must travel to Energy matters few other tools that are used to measure over- reach the shops or public transport, or how far all household poverty – the Food and Nutrition they live from places of possible employment. The kind of energy Technical Assistance (FANTA) food security The make-up of the household also factors here, someone has at home, indicators, including the Household Food Inse- such as how many generations live under one and how much it costs, curity Access Prevalence (HFIAP) indicator, the roof, and whether the family is headed up by a impacts their food Months of Adequate Household Food Provision- double-income married couple, or if the bur- choices, too. If a family ing (MAHFP) indicator, and the Household Di- den falls squarely on a single mother. Access to doesn’t have access to etary Diversity Score (HDDS) – they were able the support of community networks, such as electricity, they may to get a sense of how well resourced families a church or a community saving scheme, also cook with paraffin, were, what services they had in their homes, how plays a role, as does the extent to which the fam- sawdust, or wood. If much food they had, how nutritious it was, and ily has a sense of agency and is free to make its that energy is a strain ultimately how food secure these families were. own choices. on their budget, they The headline figures look like this: in Kisumu, The battle that comes with having too little of may choose to cook Kenya, 71% of households were ‘moderately or everything – money, transport, wholesome and faster foods, which are severely food insecure’; in Epworth, Zimbabwe, affordable food, cooking fuel or electricity, wa- often processed and less the figure was 88%; and in Kitwe, Zambia, where ter, kitchen appliances, safe storage and a clean nutritious. they studied just two low-income neighbour- kitchen – means a constant juggle to meet the hoods, the number was 90%. costs of everyday life. As many of the interviews But what does this actually mean? showed, when a little cash has to go a long way, Although each study city had its own unique food doesn’t always take priority11. When some story to tell about the extent of the localised other day-to-day demand eats into a family’s struggles of poorer families8, overall, the re- limited cash reserves, they all too often choose searchers found many similar threads emerging to cut back on healthy food like meat or vegeta- in each city. bles, opting rather to buy the cheapest and most The following snapshot from Kisumu shows filling foods that settle the immediate discom- the many facets of poverty and demonstrates fort of hunger, but don’t necessarily give them how, ultimately, poverty expresses itself in good longer-term nutrition. terms of food. More than half (53%) of every- A family’s ability to get food is tied up with one surveyed had not had enough food at home whether or not they have some kind of an in- at some point during the preceding year. Two come, either through wage-earning work, or thirds (65%) of families had not had a cash in- some other survival strategy.12 And their abil- come during that time, which researchers say ity to find work, or an alternative livelihood or shows the strong ties between income and the income, is directly linked to the wider social drain of other household expenses. Some 57% of conditions in their city and region.13 In Kitwe, people had not had enough water for home use; for instance, the collapse of the mining indus- about half had not had enough fuel for cooking try has caused widespread job losses, shrinking Liquid gold their food, and about half weren’t able to access household incomes dramatically. As a result, medicine or medical treatment9. people are finding it harder to access the food Informal traders re-package This illustrates the extent to which ‘food that seems abundant all around them. this oil into different sizes poverty’ is linked to many different factors, says In this kind of precarious urban existence, which give customers greater Dr Jane Battersby, lead researcher on the CUP where a lean budget keeps a chokehold on peo- choice.

24 25 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

Four (+one) pillars of food security

The Food and Agriculture Organiza- tion (FAO) of the United Nations says a country, community or house- 3. Usable hold is food secure when “all people, 5. Agency at all times, have physical and People must be able to use the food Canadian economist Prof Cecilia economic access to sufficient safe in a way that’s culturally appropriate, Rocha adds another factor, which she and nutritious food that meets their and ensure that their food is nutri- calls ‘agency’15. When a person has dietary needs and food preferences tious, clean and safe (meaning that some level of control in their lives, for an active and healthy life”. This they have clean water and a sanitary or the extent to which they can make rests on four pillars. Food must be: kitchen) so that they can be in a state their own choices or act independ- of nutritional wellbeing. ently in their family or community, 1. Available this also influences whether or not 4. Stable they are food secure. Gender, social There needs to be plenty of food class, ethnicity, employment status or coming into the food system, either They must be able to access this type level of education could influence an from sufficient yields from farmers, or of food constantly and not go hungry individual’s level of agency, and these through imports or food aid. It must because of a sudden economic or are factors that are often linked to also be good-quality food. An ample environmental shock. A shock could wider structural issues in society. l plateful of maize-meal porridge or rice come in the shape of a region-wide might be filling, but it’s not a diverse drought that knocks farmers’ yields, or nutritious meal if it doesn’t include reducing staple food supply across vegetables, healthy fats, and unproc- the region and pushing up prices; or essed proteins. it could be a household-level shock when a family member loses a job, or becomes ill and cannot work. Food 2. Accessible The daily grind prices in African cities are about 35% As very few people are able to grow higher than in other low- and middle- Should a parent spend their own food, particularly in con- income countries, according to a 2017 their tight budget on 14 gested city environments, they must World Bank report , which has a huge food for the family today, have cash to buy it. This means having impact on household budgets and or on school fees that a job, small business, or social grant. food buying choices. are an investment in Other ways of tapping into the food the future – because an system might be through borrowing educated child will one food from neighbours or receiving day be more likely to get donations from church groups or civil a job and support the society organisations. People often family? This is the kind have complex social, legal, political, or of daily trade-off that economic strategies for making sure many poorer city-living families must make. they can put food on the table.

26 27 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

ple, a regular wage earner may start the month storage – means people have to visit their local well with plenty of food in the house, but will feel shops more often because they can’t buy in bulk the pinch of the hungry season in the run-up to and freeze certain foods. This means they’re de- the next payday. A piecemeal labourer will have pendent on local informal traders who operate long, lean times between jobs and won’t be able within walking distance of their homes. These to plan well since he may not know when he’ll be traders often sell cheaper foods in smaller, more able to earn again. He might resort to other ways affordable volumes, compared with the produce of finding food during the hungry season, either at larger supermarkets. by borrowing or begging from neighbours, or Informal traders are limited by the same mar- hoping for church donations. Many families ad- ket forces that tighten their customers’ budg- mit to eating only two meals a day when things ets, and traders’ own lack of basic municipal are tight, choosing to skip breakfast in favour of services such as water and electricity to clean lunch and dinner. and power their stalls means they tend to sell a The stories from Kitwe, Kisumu and Ep- limited range of foods. This can create a type of worth show how a shortage of food in the home food ‘desert’ where there is not much affordable, is a mark of poverty, but also how a shortage of healthy food within walking distance of people’s food drives that very poverty. homes. When the range of available food shrinks The poverty-hunger feedback loop is fairly in this way, it can have serious health implica- intuitive: filling the food gap isn’t just about tions16. having enough calories on a day-to-day basis, “This vicious cycle reinforces the limited it’s about having enough wholesome, nutritious dietary diversity,” write Zimbabweans Dr God- calories that allow a person’s brain and body to frey Tawodzera and Dr Easther Chigumira, function at their best. When cash runs low, peo- who headed up the Epworth research team. “It ple choose cheaper foods that are often sugary, raises concerns about the current food poverty starchy staples that quiet the immediate dis- in people’s homes, as well as the potential future comfort of an aching, empty belly, but have lit- implications of diseases associated with narrow tle nutritional value: bulky rice or maize meal diets, and the future costs of those diseases for a instead of protein-rich meat, for instance, and population that is poor and unable to deal with fewer fresh vegetables (see A staple diet is not the consequences.” a stable diet, page 30). But how does a diet that’s low in diverse, When people don’t have a way to cook food healthy, nutritious foods keep people shack- easily or cheaply, they may choose foods that led in their poverty? For babies, a shortage of don’t need much cooking time, which might proper nutrition can shadow them for the rest mean choosing ultra-processed and nutritionally of their lives. The first 1 000 days of a child’s Fire it up dead options: two-minute noodles, for instance, life – from the moment of conception, until he over a more nutritious samp-and-beans meal. or she reaches about two years of age – is when If someone can’t cook Poorer families, like many encountered most of their brain development happens. With- cheaply or quickly, through this research, are not only cash- out the right vitamins and minerals in this time, they might choose food strapped, they also don’t have good service de- for the mother while the child is in utero and that needs less effort livery from their city. Without electricity and during breast-feeding, and for the child after in the kitchen, such as water at home, people can’t refrigerate their weaning, the brain won’t grow to its full poten- ultra-processed and foods or keep their kitchens clean and hygienic. tial and will always remain underdeveloped. No nutritionally dead They might therefore be more likely to buy food amount of good nutrition later in life will repair two-minute noodles that doesn’t perish as quickly, which is also like- the physical and cognitive stunting to the brain. over a more wholesome ly to be processed and shelf-stable – maize meal The child will end up with a lower IQ than he or samp-and-beans meal or rice, for instance, instead of chicken. she had the potential to achieve, will do less well or hearty fish stew. ‘Asset poverty’ – not having a fridge or safe in school, and will also be less employable as an

28 29 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

A staple diet is not a stable diet

When Mai Nyemba* from Epworth, Being free from hunger is not the Zimbabwe, does her grocery shop- same as being food secure, something ping, her only concern is whether the that many policymakers don’t realise food will “fill the tummy”. “I don’t (See What is hunger? Reframing an even think about the health benefits,” old problem, page 18). The upshot of she says, prompted by CUP research- this way of thinking is that food-secu- er Amanda Dendera who wanted to rity policies may focus on keeping an know why Mai shops as she does for ample, reliable supply of a staple crop food. Most days, the meals Mai pre- such as maize in circulation, while pares for her family of three – herself, ignoring non-staple crop production her husband and her little boy – are and supply. largely made up of starches: sadza (a Zambia’s national food policy stiff porridge made from maize meal); has privileged the production and sweet potatoes; rice. She might add a distribution of maize at the expense spoon or two of relish or a gravy, and if of non-staples, say Dr Issahaka they are a bit flush that day, she might Fuseini and Prof Owen Sichone in even cook some chicken cuts, or beef, Urban Food Systems Governance and but that usually only happens once a Poverty in African Cities17. The result week. The budget meat options, when is that non-staples such as vegeta- things are tighter, will be chicken bles and meat are expensive, often offal or heads or feet, or kapenta, a because local production is more Staple meal silvery freshwater fish that looks like costly, and not competitive relative to sardines. imported foods. Many governments These carbohydrate-heavy staples “This constant supply of maize push for farmers to may ease the discomfort of an empty provides a veneer of food security, produce staple crops, belly, but may not necessarily provide but masks significant nutritional which are often sold in the vitamins and minerals necessary deficiencies,” write Fuseini and forms that are cheap, for long-term nourishment and health. Sichone. Even though the country had refined, and have a This kind of dietary paring down a surplus of maize at the time of their long shelf-life, so are is typical of families with limited and research in Kitwe, it didn’t solve the relatively low-risk foods erratic cash flow. They rely on cheap, bigger food crisis that families were for both retailers and often highly refined carbohydrates facing at the time, many reporting shoppers. This means having a diet with little diversity in there’s often enough that have a long shelf-life, and bulk up bulk on a person’s plate, into a substantial volume of food, but the several months leading up to the l in the form of refined will often cut back on the diversity of researchers’ visit. maize meal or rice, but fresh foods – vegetables, healthy fats not necessarily good and proteins – that give a richer range nutrition. of nutrients.

30 31 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

adult. The upshot of this kind of early childhood she sources food for her family. So, on Sundays, Lower-income families shop with many dif- undernutrition, according to The World Bank, is when farmers take the day off and don’t come to ferent kinds of retailers, both formal and in- that it can reduce a person’s earning potential by market, her family generally goes hungry. formal. The layout of the city also impacts on as much as 10% through the course of their life18. Anesu’s story adds another glimpse into the people’s ability to move about, get to work, and This will have implications for their ability to complex relationship between social and mar- do their grocery shopping. In light of this, poli- provide for their own family one day. ket forces that shape whether a family like hers cymakers can address food poverty more ef- The second burden on the poor that’s associ- has food on the table or not. In the urban African fectively with policies that support formal and ated with this narrow diet is the financial drain context, food still remains largely the domain of informal food retail markets, both as providers on a family that has to bear the burden of the ill- women, who tend to spend more of the house- of jobs and as a source of food. Policies and plan- nesses that result from these two kinds of mal- hold budget on food than men do, and tend to ning should also support food retailing in plac- nutrition. Undernutrition from a chronic short- share it more fairly20. But if accessing the urban es where there is plenty of foot traffic, such as age of vitamins and minerals results in general food system is dependent on having cash from around public transport hubs. The city also has physical and brain stunting, a compromised im- either a job, a small business, or a social grant, an obligation to roll out reliable and fair munici- mune system, cognitive underdevelopment, this means that women need to be able to oper- pal services to traders and to poorer households. anaemia, fatigue, depression, or osteoporosis, ate within this system if they’re going to be able (See Chapter 3: Cinderella Markets, page 57, depending on what nutrients are missing from to take food home to their families. and Chapter 6: White Elephant, page 123.) the diet19. City-living women like Anesu are more than When someone has no money to buy food, But being dependent on a diet of cheap, highly mere consumers at the tail-end of the food value though, they tend to fall back on older, more tra- processed, energy-dense foods that are largely chain. Food retailing is an important livelihood ditional ways of getting by. They might barter, nutritionally dead also results in weight gain and strategy for them, and they are pillars of this or borrow. But borrowing money or food with obesity, as well as a range of chronic diseases – sector in African cities. In Kisumu, more than the promise that they will repay the loan once heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes and two thirds of food retailers are women (about they’re flush again, is risky. Many of the people its associated illnesses, for instance – that are 70%)21. In Kitwe, it’s more than half (58%)22. In who shared their stories with the CUP team ad- a huge drain on a family as they lose productive Epworth, 64% of the traders are women. (See mitted that they do sometimes approach neigh- work days while they treat their illnesses. (See Chapter 3: Cinderella Markets, page 57, for bours, friends, or family members during a hun- Chapter 2: Big is Beautiful, page 37, for more on more on the importance of the informal sector.) gry season, but they’re careful not to do this too the financial implications for families that strug- The community-level surveys done by the often for fear of straining relationships. gle with the diseases associated with obesity.) CUP researchers confirm that city dwellers When Dendera spoke with Tafadzwa Man- aren’t producing their own food, and generally gezi* during her visit to Epworth in June 2016, this is because they can’t, not because they don’t Tafadzwa said that she and her family had gone Women at the helm: we’re want to. In Kisumu, for instance, only 1% of to bed hungry the night before. When it came buying, not farming families said they grow their own food, while 3% to breakfast that day, well, she said, “nothing said they get food from livestock that they own. so far”. Her plan was to have some roasted soya Another hungry time for Anesu Mukwanda, the When they explained why they don’t grow or beans for lunch once the interview was over, she widow from Kitwe, is on Sunday mornings. Af- rear their own food, some said it is because they said. When asked about borrowing food or mon- ter her husband’s passing, she started to earn don’t have access to land within the limits of the ey to buy food, Tafadzwa was emphatic. “No, a living by selling vegetables at a local market. city that they can use to farm. Others said they I’m scared of borrowing because I don’t want to She has put some of her monthly income from aren’t producing their own food because it’s owe people, I have no way to ensure repayment,” Stuck in poverty these sales into a community savings scheme easier to buy food than to grow it. Some said that she told Dendera. “I don’t want bad blood with with her fellow traders, and she’s built good they don’t have time to farm. Others said that it’s my neighbours. As it is, I’m having trouble with Fast-food companies relationships with the farmers who supply her too risky, and people often steal it. a local money-lender. We borrowed 40 dollars have been criticised with produce in case she ever has to buy any on The solution to filling the food gap in these (Zimbabwean) from him for bus fare so that for their ‘predatory’ credit. These are some of the ways in which she city contexts isn’t for city managers to merely my husband could go to work. But my husband and ‘pervasive’ spreads the risk of having a precarious, fluctu- give people access to land and promote urban hasn’t been paid for the job, so I haven’t been advertising of branded ating income. agriculture, the CUP researchers agree23. This able to pay the money back, and the interest rate junk food, which they Selling vegetables as an informal trader is could be part of the solution, but not one that is 50%. The money-lender has threatened to get market aggressively, how Anesu makes a living, and it’s also how policymakers should lean on too heavily. his money by violence.” particularly to children.

32 33 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS the hungry season

USA farmer protectionism drives global obesity pandemic24

In the past century, agricultural poli- by vegetables, then meat, and even Carbo-loading cies in the United States have been less fat. This is the so-called ‘Western geared towards protecting farmers’ diet’ that has been exported to much The USA’s nutritional interests. This resulted in a set of of the rest of the world. guidelines, which have dietary guidelines that are not based “There are many examples of how largely been exported to Africa and which on good nutritional science, but were national and global food security pol- push a carbohydrate- designed to secure a market for farm- icy and research has over-whelmingly dense diet, were shaped focused on the production of grain,” ers’ overproduction of staple foods by policies that were and boost food-industry profits. The says CUP lead researcher Dr Jane designed to protect result is nearly a century of state- Battersby. “There is a juggernaut of US farming interests, endorsed dietary guidelines that have science and donor funding that con- not by evidence-based been exported from the United States tributes towards policies and farmer nutritional science. and are ultimately driving the obesity production practices that ultimately pandemic around the world. narrow the set of foods available to us, Since the 1930s, the US Depart- which feeds into the dietary norms ment of Agriculture (USDA) has that we see around us today.” l pushed a set of policies that protect farmers’ interests by subsidising certain staple crops, particularly corn, soya, rice, and wheat. Industrial food processing provided the ideal market for the glut in these mostly cereal crops. But in order to grow the market on the consumer end of the value chain, the USDA and the food industry needed to convince Americans to eat more carbohydrate-based foods. The result is that the USDA designed a set of state-endorsed dietary guidelines, heavily influenced by the lobbying interests of Big Food. These guidelines ultimately evolved into today’s ‘food pyramid’, which instructs people that a ‘healthy’ diet is one that is made up mostly of carbohydrates, followed in decreasing portion sizes

34 35 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

2 Big is beautiful

Although some of the women in the lower-income neighbourhood of Masiphumelele, south of Cape Town, South Africa, are quite comfortable in their heavier bodies, many have taken on board the messages about the health implications of being overweight. Yet their efforts to trim down are often in vain, which shows that making healthy food and lifestyle choices for people living on the breadline is about more than whether they have the strong willpower and all the right information. This story shows the complex political, cultural, and market forces that drive a kind of ‘food apartheid’ in developing communities, where poor people, as Oxfam South Africa says, “have good access to bad food, and bad access to good food”25. The upshot is that people are often heavy, sick, and over-burdened with blame.

On the menu

In the past, the focus foods or food-like of obesity studies has products are available been to look at the in our communities, individual’s choices at what price, and how within the food aspirational are they? system, rather than All these factors shape scrutinising the wider our food choices, and system itself. What ultimately our health.

36 37 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS big is beautiful

At 05:00 a.m., the main road running into Ocean View is pretty in name alone. Before sunrise, If people are fat, this storyline there’s no sight of the breathtaking seascapes that make Cape Town’s southern peninsula so goes, it’s because they’re ill- famous. It’s just a long stretch of hard asphalt Quick and easy washed in acid orange from the streetlights that disciplined and lazy, and so the dot-and-dash the pavement, which at least of- The city’s food fers pedestrians some protection from the cars onus is on them to eat and exercise environment often that thunder past at dawn. A row of eucalyptus their way back to good, lean health makes it easy to make trees lean slightly, turning away from the fierce the wrong food and gales that howl from the southeast for most of lifestyle choices, and the summer. hard to make the right It’s certainly no place for a cushy Park Run. ones. This is the route that some of the woman take seasonal jobs on nearby farms. Most eke from nearby Masiphumelele use from time to out an existence in the cashlessness that comes time, when their guilt gets the better of them with being between jobs, or trying to get by on and they try, once again, to build an early-morn- the pittance of a social grant. Their stories show ing ‘constitutional’ into their day. what it is like to live on the breadline for people Well-intentioned as they are, these bouts of who are somehow expected to take charge of discipline often don’t last. A ‘small’ crisis will their health and their unruly bodies when they come along and disrupt the women’s attempted have little means to do so. routine: one of them might have the water sup- Mostly, these women are really comfortable ply to her home cut off, meaning she has to wake in their own skin, despite the extra weight they up at 03:00 a.m. to use a neighbour’s tap to wash carry. They say that being curvy and well-pad- the laundry by hand; an unexpected expense ded makes them feel like they belong, that they will blow the family’s budget and the stress of it are part of their community. It shows the world will just be too much; or someone might say she that they are healthy and that their marriages stopped because she is ‘lazy’, when what she re- are thriving. It means satiety and wellbeing to ally means is that she’s feeling worn out. them, not cloying hunger and want. It might also Then they’ll fall back into their old ways, be an unspoken message to the world that they their weight will creep back up, and they’ll fret are not poor, even though they may be, or a way that when they go back to the clinic for their to show that they don’t have that virus. next checkup, they’re likely to be told off for But they are also not deaf to the messages letting their blood pressure get out of control they’re hearing about the risks of weight gain again. It is a pattern of ebbing motivation, fol- and blood pressure and diabetes. These messag- lowed by a spiral of guilt and self-recrimination es might come from the local clinic nurses, or a that so many people struggle with in a world doctor at the hospital; or maybe their suburban- where being overweight and obese is outstrip- mum boss is bullying them into going ‘on a diet’. ping the old infectious diseases that were You can imagine them setting their alarms a once the main health worries here in southern little earlier each day, pulling on whatever shoes Africa – illnesses associated with HIV or tu- might be suitable to exercise in, and shuffling berculosis. their stiff early-morning bodies out onto the These women are mostly charwomen, or road that heads towards Ocean View to put in a home carers, or they work in local grocery few kays before the sun comes up. stores. Some may have a gig on the side selling This is how Dr Jo Hunter Adams from the second-hand clothing or offal picked up at a School of Public Health and Family Medi- meat market about an hour’s drive away. Some cine at the University of Cape Town (UCT)

38 39 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

State of the (Heavy) naTION

South Africa has the highest numbers sociated with these so-called life- 28 of overweight and obese people in sub- style-related diseases (43%) . After Saharan Africa and these figures are tuberculosis, diabetes is the second climbing, together with the associated biggest killer of women in South non-communicable diseases (NCDs): Africa, according to the 2016 figures 29 heart disease, certain cancers, strokes, from Statistics South Africa. It is and the many illnesses that accom- also the number one cause of death 30 pany Type-2 diabetes. Complications among women in the Western Cape. The obesity prevention fact sheet relating to ‘adult onset’ diabetes – the Heavy and happy kind of diabetes that develops later in by the Healthy Living Alliance sums up the burden to individuals and so- life, often after years of exposure to a Many of the high-sugar diet – include lost vision, ciety as a result: obesity increases an heavier women in organ shut-down and loss of circula- individual’s overall healthcare costs, Masiphumelele are tion in hands and feet which can lead they lose wages due to illnesses and happy with their extra Urban life to gangrene, kidney failure, dementia, disability, they lose productive work weight, although they and erectile dysfunction. hours, have to take earlier retirement, are taking on board Masiphumelele Nearly 40% of South African women and it whittles away at their general the messages they’re is a fairly typical 31, 32, 33 hearing about the health and 11% of men are obese, according wellbeing. low-income urban implications of being to the latest National Health Survey, So while the private corporations neighbourhood about 50 overweight. Getting released in 201426 selling this food are making extensive kilometres south of Cape . Meanwhile, The lean, though, is more profits, poorer communities bear the Town, South Africa, Lancet calculates that nearly two- complicated than simply burden of lost income as they strug- with a mix of state and thirds of South African women (69.3%) starting an exercise 27 gle to hold down employment while privately built formal and 39% of men are overweight . regime, or choosing and informal homes. Nearly half of all deaths in South managing their chronic illnesses after healthier foods. Africa are linked to the illnesses as- years of exposure to this diet. l

40 41 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS big is beautiful

describes the way that some of the women from ple enough information, and if they’re strong- Masiphumelele have tried to take charge of willed and motivated, they’ll pull themselves up their health in a cityscape that makes it so hard by their bootstraps and save themselves from for them to do so. themselves. ‘Masi’, as the locals call it, is situated about The lived experience that Hunter Adams has 50 kilometres south of Cape Town’s city cen- captured through the stories of the women in tre. It’s a mishmash of state and privately built Masiphumelele is confirmed by sociology Prof bricks-and-mortar homes, dotted with back- Gerardo Otero from Simon Fraser University in yard Wendy houses and informal shacks. It’s Vancouver, Canada. In his searing critique of the a lower-middle-class-meets-informal settle- modern industrial food system,36 he points out ment, and the people who live here are likely to that this attitude, in its “crudest form… amounts be the lowest income earners, if they are lucky to to ‘blaming the victim’”, which stems from an have work at all. ideological position that ignores the powerful Hunter Adams hasn’t formally counted political and market forces, both locally, nation- how many people are overweight or obese in ally, and internationally, that shape the food en- Masiphumelele, but the figures are likely to be vironment in communities like this. similar to those across southern and South Af- Otero and colleagues point out that, in real- rica, and in many other rapidly urbanising de- ity, poorer people are becoming obese because veloping countries around the world (see State the food they have most easy access to is cheap of the (heavy) nation, page 40). But she has and highly processed, but also mostly nutrition- been working in the Masiphumelele community ally dead. They’re simply unable to access good, since 2016, trying to gauge the cultural attitudes healthy food because it is either too expensive, towards ‘fatness’, and thinking about how the or not sold in their local shops. They may also environment in which these women live shapes not have enough time to prepare food at home, their food and lifestyle choices. or their kitchen might not have the basics like a What she’s found is a complex interplay of working fridge, or electricity, or a sink with run- factors that are so much bigger than the indi- ning water (see Cheap ‘junk’ and the rise of vidual women’s lives, something that interna- ‘Big Food’, page 46). The result is that the work- tional public-health discussions are now finally ing classes or unemployed are unfairly shoul- beginning to recognise: the problem is not the dered with the responsibility for their diet and individuals themselves, it’s the environment in health in a wider structural context in which which they live that makes it so hard for them to they actually have limited agency to help them- stay lean and healthy. selves. Yet, during her research, Hunter Adams en- Leading medical journal The Lancet debunks countered the stubborn attitude that emanates this dusty old ‘blame the victim’ narrative in from society in general – also still evident in its 2011 special report on obesity, saying that the public-health discourse, and amplified by today’s problems of overweight and obesity are the media and employers – that bad dietary not the fault of the individual, but rather they Fresh versus choices, and the resulting health fallout, are are the “normal response by normal people to an packaged simply a matter of individual choice and behav- abnormal environment”.37 iour among poorer people.34, 35 If people are fat, After recording the life stories of 20 women Many of the women this storyline goes, it’s because they’re ill-disci- in Masiphumelele and sitting with 57 other in ‘Masi’ still prefer plined and lazy, and so the onus is on them to eat women in various focus groups, Hunter Adams the traditional, fresh and exercise their way back to good, lean health. saw the kind of bind they find themselves in. foods of their youth, The policy response to this is to push education “That some of these women are waking up at but they’re developing as the main ‘fix’, in the hope that it’ll drive indi- 05:00 a.m. to exercise shows they’re taking the a taste for more sugary, vidual behaviour change: if you simply give peo- health advice from clinicians on board. But the refined products.

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burden of this expectation, and the guilt they feel when they can’t manage it and fail, just This is the era of ‘Big Food’ – the doesn’t seem to improve their quality of life.” Most people are well aware of the health media’s catch-all term for the problems relating to food and diet, she says, but in reality, the priority for these women is find- multinational and national food ing and keeping a stable job, rather than getting healthy. There are bigger challenges in the wider and beverage corporations that food environment that are shaping their bodies dominate the global market but which are often overlooked. Telling them to eat or run themselves thin in such an abnormal environment is like asking a drowning swimmer to save herself from a The reality of surviving in an urban food rip current simply by swimming faster towards system is that it’s not enough for residents to the shore, when what she really needs is some simply have calories moving through their other way to free herself from the pull of the neighbourhoods (see Chapter 1: The Hungry current. Season, page 15). They also need to be able to access those calories38, 39, which usually means having money in their pockets, either from a sal- ‘Fast or feast’ in the abnormal ary, a small business, a loan, or a social grant. But food environment when families like those in Masiphumelele are living on the economic fringe, even those who The hungry season for some of the Masiphume- are employed are on a chokingly tight budget. lele women usually creeps in towards the end of The poorer a family is, the harder it is for them each month. The first week of the month usu- to absorb even the smallest economic shock, ally starts well for those who collect a wage or such as having a phone pick-pocketed on the social grant. They can eat meals with plenty of taxi ride home after work, an unexpected medi- vegetables, and maybe even treat their families cal expense, a day’s wages lost because they to the luxury of a two-litre bottle of their favour- have to spend a few hours at the clinic waiting ite fizzy drink. Week two might still be alright, for treatment, or a sudden hike in food prices in with a good mix of different fresh foods on their response to drought. Mixed messages plates. But this will tail off as their cash starts Many of the people in Cape Town’s lower- to dwindle until, by month-end, many women income communities, including Masiphume- The Masiphumelele say they are down to eating just maize meal and lele, are migrants from the Eastern Cape. Their women are getting white bread. journey to the city is typical of urban migration a confusing noise of “The women in Masi budget carefully. They trends around the developing world, when peo- nutritional information usually have just enough money to cover food ple often shed the traditional diets of their ru- from their local clinics, and things like rent. But there is invariably an ral roots and adopt what’s sometimes called the from their suburban- unexpected expense that throws them for a ‘Western diet’ (see Cheap ‘junk’ and the rise mum employers, and loop,” explains Hunter Adams. “To call it a ‘cri- of ‘Big Food’, page 46). This nutritional tran- food advertising, making sis’ sounds acute but for many of these women sition generally means a switch from home- it hard to know what’s it takes a really small thing, like a child needing grown greens and unrefined cereals, to a diet healthy and what’s not. something unexpected for school, to disrupt packed with ultra-processed, packaged foods Does banana-flavoured their budget. So they run out of money, and food that are low in fibre and high in refined carbo- maas actually have is often the first thing they cut. But they don’t hydrates, sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats. These banana in it, and does it want to talk about this because there’s an ele- are mostly cheap, because of the economies of mean it’s healthier than ment of shame for them.” scale that apply to factory-processed foods and unflavoured maas?

44 45 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS big is beautiful

corporations that produce them, to “The increasing control of MNCs 40 A trader’s roadside food stall in Cheap ‘junk’ and the rise of ‘Big Food’ Epworth, Zimbabwe, tells the story flood global markets. The corpora- over the food environment, the un- of one of the most important changes tions cream the profits, while passing regulated operations of the fast-food in the global food system since the the healthcare costs on to the govern- sector, and the extensive advertising end of World War II: the stock that ments that have to pay to treat the re- of ‘high status’ fast foods, has resulted crowds the makeshift timber-framed sulting illnesses, and the individuals in an environment saturated with stand is mostly baked maize crisps, who lose livelihoods as they become unhealthy and cheap foods, with impli- sweets, biscuits, and sugary drinks. heavy and sick. cations for public health, hunger and They’re all highly refined, sealed in Otero describes the neoliberal nutrition,” states the Social Resources foil or plastic packaging, and wrapped diet as “a pattern of production and Institute in its 2016 report on the role in eye-catching branding. Less than consumption of cheap, energy-dense, of MNCs in poverty and inequality in a quarter of the stock is unprocessed, nutrient poor, processed edibles”, South Africa, Brazil, and China.42 unbranded, or looks like real food: a which have come to dominate food In the developing world, the explo- small pyramid of apples, a few packets environments since the liberalisation sion of Big Food is directly linked of what appears to be dried dates, and of trade in the 1980s. to the nutritional transition, global some bags of peanuts. Technological developments al- obesity, and the pandemic of non- The industrialisation of our food lowed for the mass production of this communicable diseases (NCDs). system started in the United States food. Meanwhile the liberalisation of Kisumu and Kitwe, and to a lesser of America in the 1940s, and allowed global trade allowed for the compa- extent Epworth, have not yet been cheap, ultra-processed packaged nies that make it to grow to staggering overwhelmed by the tide of these food-like products to explode onto size and influence. This has seen the brands, but there’s still plenty of global markets, first in Europe and rise of multinational corporations junk food on sale, even if it’s more then to the rest of the world. The new (MNCs) in the food and beverage traditional in nature: refined, carbo- markets of the developing world, such sector. These are so-called ‘stateless’ hydrate-dense staples like mandazi as those in southern Africa, are the companies that usually have their (doughnuts), vetkoek (deep-fried latest conquests of the corporations head offices in one country and opera- buns), fries, maputi (a popcorn- behind these products. tions in many other ‘host’ nations, like snack – see Maputi: Zim-style It’s a diet that’s high in sugar or they are smaller national corpo- popcorn, page 53) and local brands of and saturated fat, and low in fibre, rations that now dominate many chips are popular snack foods here. l fresh produce and whole grains, and aspects of the global and regional because it appears to be a US-export, food system, including production, it’s often called the ‘Western diet’. But processing and manufacturing, distri- this framing implies that the spread of bution, and retail. Some of them have become dispro- the diet is a relatively benign cultural The big switch phenomenon, the result of a kind of portionately powerful and wealthy, post-war cultural imperialism, where relative to the developing world na- When people move into the Big Mac and KFC are the dietary tion states into which they are mov- cities, they often abandon equivalent of fashion products such as ing: Walmart’s annual revenue, for a more traditional diet Levi’s jeans or Nike trainers. instance, is greater than the GDP of of homegrown greens Canadian sociologist Prof Gerardo South Africa (2010 figures show Wal- and unrefined cereals, Otero prefers to call it a ‘neoliberal mart’s revenue was US$408 billion and adopt the so-called 41 ‘Western diet’, which is diet’, because this better reflects the versus SA’s GDP of US$364 billion ). cheap, packaged, refined, political and market forces that al- This is the rise of what the media and nutritionally dead. . low these cheap junk foods, and the now dubs ‘Big Food’.

46 47 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

This is the cost of long-term exposure to The rise of Big Food in recent sugar, and the loss of wellbeing and income for Southern a poorer person who can no longer work due to decades has created a kind of blindness, the loss of a limb, or kidney failure is Africa opens a burden that she and her family have to carry ‘food apartheid’: an “inequality alone. its markets Today, sugar is added to food in large vol- in access to quality food”, as umes, sometimes as a bulking agent, and it is Otero describes it often concealed in savoury foods. Sugary drinks Regional trade policies have also are now pervasive in our diets and make a le- played a role in the nutritional thal contribution to the diabetes pandemic. The transition and the associated disease cost of treating these diseases is carried largely epidemic in southern Africa. the way the manufacturers of these products by the state, but the firms that sell this cheap, Since the 1990s, the Southern are able to dominate the market. There’s a di- addictive substance, are pocketing the profits African Development Community rect cause-and-effect link between this dietary without being held accountable for the burden (SADC) as an economic bloc opened shift and the obesity pandemic in the developing on society at large. its doors to international trade and world, as well as the cascade of non-communi- This is the era of ‘Big Food’ – the media’s cable diseases (NCDs) that goes with it43: heart catch-all term for the multinational and nation- investment. disease, certain cancers, strokes, and the many al food and beverage corporations that domi- In just 15 years, soft-drink im- illnesses associated with Type-2 diabetes. nate the global market. Their sugary, starchy, reports into the region went up by 76% Diabetes is the second biggest killer of wom- fined products have largely replaced ‘small food’, between 1995 and 2010, according to en in South Africa. The disease is merciless: which is usually locally produced, often fresh a report in the journal Global Health when there’s a high concentration of sugar in and highly diverse, and was once the bedrock Action, while processed snack food the blood, it becomes ‘sticky’ and the flow slug- of our diets. In the new, industrialised food sys- imports went up by 83%.44 gish, particularly through the smaller vessels. tem, ‘product’ replaces ‘food’ on the shelves and “At the same time, imports of It clogs the vessels and damages their walls, on our plates, says Otero. These products have processed foods and soft drinks from and over time this cuts off blood flow, starving even taken centre stage in an image-conscious outside the region, largely from Asia nerves and outer limbs of oxygen. world: a Big Mac has more social currency than and the Middle East, are increasing Damage to tiny vessels in the eyes can even- a no-name-brand green apple. at a dramatic rate, with soft-drink tually pull a shutter of darkness over them, The rise of Big Food in recent decades has blurring vision and even bringing on blindness. created a kind of ‘food apartheid’: an “inequal- imports growing by almost 1 200% Without oxygen reaching important nerves, ity in access to quality food”, as Otero describes and processed snack foods by 750%,” someone might not feel pain when they bump it. Wealthier families can afford ‘luxury’ foods the report states. a foot or leg, for instance, and so an important such as meat, nuts, and fresh fruit and vegeta- This report highlights the link survival feedback message becomes muted, in- bles. Better-off households also usually own a between regional and international creasing the chances of further injury. Without car, so can easily drive to supermarkets to stock trade, and the on-the-ground public- a good flow of oxygen to the extremities, a minor up on these foods and enjoy the discounts that Globalising the health crisis across the region. It injury to a hand, for example, might not heal, come with the bulk buying power of big retail- dinner table calls for strong government inter- possibly leading to serious infection, gangrene ers. Meanwhile, residents of lower-income vention to drive policies that curb or amputation. Clogged blood vessels in the kid- neighbourhoods have too little money to meet Since southern African NCDs. There is opportunity here for a neys means these organs can’t filter out the tox- their day-to-day expenses, including food. countries have opened “regional nutrition policy framework ins in the blood, and as a result, the body won’t For a long time, food systems thinkers de- their markets to global (that) could complement the SADC’s flush out excess fluid and waste. Damage to ves- scribed the food environment in lower-income trade, imports of sugary sels in the brain can lead to dementia (dementia communities as food ‘deserts’: places where drinks and snack foods ongoing commitment to regional is now being called ‘Type-3 diabetes’ in many there was not enough healthy food available at have exploded, which trade policy”. l medical circles). If you are a man, the stickiness affordable prices. The notion was that super- has been linked directly in your veins can even steal your erection. markets would enter these neighbourhoods and with the obesity crisis.

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fill this food gap. This largely has not happened (see Chapter 3: Cinderella Markets, page With its massive profits, 57.) Now, however, a different term is coming through to describe the kind of food environ- Big Food is able to use its global ment that’s evolving in these communities: the food ‘swamp’. It is not that there’s a lack of food power and expert strategies to in these neighbourhoods, according to the Lexi- con of Food45, but rather that they’re “flooded push brands into developing with unhealthy, highly processed, low-nutrient world markets food combined with disproportionate advertising for unhealthy food compared to wealthier neighborhoods”. A lot of the food here is cheap, packaged, they were cooking and eating alone. And, al- ultra-processed, and ultimately nutrition- though some of the older women still hankered ally ‘dead’. Carless, these families depend on after the ‘small foods’ they’d grown up eating in their nearest food-store owner, whose shelves the Eastern Cape and said they did not really are stocked with mostly non-perishable food- like the processed foods that typify their life in like products, rather than real, fresh foods. For Cape Town, many seemed to be developing a some spaza shop owners and roadside traders, taste for the sugary, fatty, flavoured foods that it might make economic sense to stock their come in glitzy sealed packages with recognis- shelves and stands with foods that have a long able brand names. shelf life and can withstand manhandling. It’s The bottom line is that, in the ‘food swamp’ financially more risky to buy spinach leaves of Masiphumelele, poorer families are buying and tomatoes that bruise and wilt in a matter of what they can afford within their budget, and days, compared with maize meal, crisps and bis- what’s available in their neighbourhood. cuits. This is particularly true for stallholders When civil society group Oxfam looked at who don’t have refrigeration or running water what South Africans were eating in 2014, it to keep their food safe and sanitary. concluded that poorer families have “good ac- Even though there are plenty of vegetable cess to bad food, and bad access to good food”46. vendors in Masiphumelele, Hunter Adams says The food that is most readily available is cheap, it’s still often financially risky for people to buy highly refined, packed with starch and sugar, but healthier perishables. with very little nutritional goodness. When the “These foods are available in their com- CUP researchers visited Kitwe, Kisumu and Ep- munities, and people often want to buy fresh worth, they found that the diets in these neigh- produce, but the economics might not add up,” bourhoods were still fairly traditional compared CUP lead researcher Dr Jane Battersby goes on to those in South Africa’s cities, and that while Food ‘swamp’ to explain. There is the risk of fresh produce there is evidence of a shift in the direction of spoiling before a family can get to use it all up, the so-called ‘Western’ or ‘industrial’ diet, this Urban life often makes which adds more risk to the equation. “That’s hasn’t gained the same momentum as it has in it hard to make the why ‘long-legged’ vegetables sell well, veggies South Africa. right food and lifestyle like onions, butternut, carrots, or potatoes,” In trying to explain why the Masiphumelele choices, and easy to she adds. women are eating maize meal and white bread make the wrong ones. In slowly weaving together the story of at month-end, rather than vegetables, Hunter Sugary and fast foods these women’s lives and their decision-making Adams says the reasons are complicated. are part of this abnormal around food, Hunter Adams found another un- “It’s partly because vegetable calories are food environment and derlying reason why many of them didn’t want quite expensive, relative to many other kinds of are often marketed to take the time to prepare good food: because calories. Many of these communities come from aggressively to children.

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Maputi: Zim-style popcorn by Fadzai Muramba

Roasted maize has always been a favourite snack in Zimbabwe. Tradi- tionally, we make it by roasting maize kernels in a heavy-based roasting pan on an open fire, which gives it a be- loved smoky flavour. We usually snack on it while socialising around the fire. Today, people living in cities still enjoy this snack, although mostly we prepare it over a stovetop, which means it doesn’t get its distinctive smokiness. The store-bought versions that are already popped and packaged – called maputi – are also popular. Maputi is similar to other puffed grains, such as puffed rice. It looks very much like what Western- ers know as popcorn. We can buy it plain, or salted, coated in coloured sugar, or flavoured to cater for many ing and packaging operations. Small All the rage varying tastes. Today we even get proprietors run these operations with more modern flavours such as salt a few unskilled employees who do Maputi – similar to and vinegar, Mexican chilli, tomato, the bulk of the work manually. It is popcorn – is a popular and peanut butter. We produce mapu- mainly maputi producers’ elementary snack in Zimbabwe, ti extensively here in Zimbabwe, so but innovative production practices where it’s largely there is an abundance of it along the that have created an abundance of it produced by unlicensed, streets, sold either by street vendors in Harare. l informal operators. or tuck shops, or in retail and wholesale stores. The recent boom in maputi is Fadzai Muramba is a CUP-affiliated largely due to an increase in infor- Zimbabwean sociology student based mal – meaning unlicensed – process- at the University of Cape Town.

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retail sector. A bulk-produced modern spin on Sponsoring global sporting events, such as Multinationals expand their the old favourite now includes sweetened and the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games, flavoured versions, as well. and buying in sports stars to endorse their brands into developing markets “The packaged food industry is implicated products, creates the myth that many of these here. They market deliberately to the poor and food-like products are associated with fitness, by giving small, independent take advantage of people with clever messag- leanness, sporting prowess, high social status, ing,” says Hunter Adams. “People tell me they and desirability. shop owners free fridges and buy strawberry- or banana-flavoured maas, Hawkes’ critique gives a bird’s-eye view of vending machines or signage. rather than plain maas, because they say it has the way in which these multinationals carefully fruit in it.” strategise to expand their brands into develop- In exchange, the shop becomes a A similar story comes from a state primary ing markets. They do this through helping out healthcare clinic in nearby Fisantekraal, a small, independent and often informal shop billboard for the multinational’s lower-income neighbourhood about 30 kilo- owners by giving them free fridges and vend- metres northeast of Cape Town, where a nurse ing machines or signage. In exchange, the shop corporate branding was instructing young mothers to wean their becomes a billboard for the multinational’s loud infants onto a ginger-flavoured sugary drink, and visible corporate branding. The evidence of because the billboards in her neighbourhood how effective they are is visible right here on the a background where they’d get vegetables free associate the brand with a strong, lean cham- streets of Masiphumelele. from their back yard, so it’s hard for them to get pion boxer.49 Deep in the settlement, where Pokela Road their heads around paying for veggies. It’s also “The mind boggles,” the research coordina- crosses Masemola Road, the neglected tar partly because of the mixed messages they’re tor from the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, surface begins to crumble, petering out into a getting about what constitutes healthy food.” who discovered this, said a few years later. “This muddy dirt track that leads towards the last Some of the women she worked with are nurse influenced an entire generation of babies, rows of houses. The pavement is lined by a cleaners in middle-class homes, where they’ve because we came across several mothers in that moat of muddy water because the storm-water been given the impression that processed ce- community who reported weaning their infants drains have clogged up with rubbish that es- reals, sweetened yoghurts, and fruit juice are onto ginger beer.” caped the municipal garbage truck’s last col- healthy. As a result, they may spend a dispro- A nutrition and health consultant with the lection run. portionate amount of their food budget on these World Food Programme in Zambia also told Yet where the state is struggling to meet the foods, which are high in sugar and not, in fact, of one mother’s reason for giving her weaning needs of its citizens, a multinational is manag- terribly nutritious. infant baked maize crisps: the product’s name ing to do its work. There’s a two-storey zinc They might also be wooed by the marketing referred to cheese, and she thought it must con- building on the corner, its baby-blue and pink and advertising messages of the food industry, tain dairy.50 painted walls faded by the sun and weeping whose tactics have been described by leading With its massive profits, Big Food is able to streaks of rust here and there. The building is Snack attack public-health thinkers as persuasive and per- use its global power and expert strategies to part home, part business. Hand-painted signs vasive.47 The Lancet’s special report on obesity push brands into developing world markets in advertise the services of a local barber and an- Although many snack in 2011 goes so far as to say they are even preda- a way that has come under heavy fire in pub- nounce that there’s second-hand furniture for foods in these cities tory, particularly in terms of how they target lic-health circles, including the World Health sale inside. are still relatively children.48 Organization (WHO). Writing for the WHO in The sign immediately above the shop, crow- traditional, such as Big Food has its brand names everywhere, 2012, food policy expert Prof Corinna Hawkes ing loudest of all from the second-storey wall, these raw peanuts and and their packaging is often misleading: the from City, University of London, notes the ex- tells the neighbourhood that this is the spaza coal-grilled maize on the names of crisps or savoury biscuit snacks might tent of the reach of some of these multination- shop Mogadishu*. The shop’s name is printed cob, many street-sold contain the words ‘cheese’ or ‘beef’ because als, partly owing to fortunes they are able to in white text against a red background. Stamped snack foods tend to be they’re flavoured to that taste, but creating the spend on public relations, including “service- immediately below Mogadishu is the name of refined, carbohydrate- impression that they contain dairy or beef. related marketing, television and movie tie- the entity that gave this sign to the trader who dense staples, such as Maas is a big favourite here. These days, this ins, sports sponsorship, music, event and prod- would otherwise not have been able to afford it: mandazi (doughnuts), traditional sour-milk drink is also made and uct sponsorship, educational competitions, one of the most recognisable personalities on or vetkoek (deep-fried bottled by dairy manufacturers for the formal and philanthropy”.51 the planet – Coca-Cola. buns).

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3 Cinderella Markets

Big supermarkets and gleaming shopping malls are the poster children of what many city developers see as the modern African city. But working away feverishly in their shadow, often unrecognised and sometimes even maligned, is an industrious informal food economy that keeps our cities stocked with food and provides the jobs that give people the income they need to buy their own food. While supermarkets deepen their reach into our cities, often speeding up our dietary switch to packaged, nutritionally poor foods, the value of informal food traders goes largely unseen and often unsupported.

Off the radar

Roadside shopkeepers are part of a vibrant informal food economy that feeds and employs many in our cities.

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It started with what might seem like a relatively is linked with poor sanitation. Untreated, it harmless eviction of a handful of Kitwe traders can kill within hours. This particular outbreak from the pavement at the front of a big retail started in the Kanyama informal settlement on chain store in the north Zambian town towards the outskirts of Lusaka and quickly spread into the end of 2016. They were forced to pack up the capital.55 their fresh produce stands and relocate to the The Zambian government sprang into action, Chisokone informal market a few blocks away. setting up temporary cholera treatment cen- The ‘before’ photograph captures a normal tres, starting a rapid immunisation drive, and trading day, prior to their removal. The wide shutting down public gatherings across the city, sun umbrellas that shade the traders, mostly including in schools, at funerals and churches, women, are sun-bleached and tattered by the and in the market places. According to an Al elements, but the traders’ produce is not: knee- Jazeera news crew, the government regarded the high piles of green, crisp spinach leaves; plump informal markets as a breeding ground for chol- red tomatoes; ivory-coloured onions; cabbages era and closed them for business. At first, trad- as large as soccer balls. A man in a suit stops to ers were cooperative, but within days tensions buy some groceries from a woman in a wrapa- started mounting as stallholders began counting round chitenge. It is an ordinary day in an ordi- the cost of losing their livelihoods. They put their nary African urban market economy. outdoor shops back up and started trading again. In the ‘after’ photograph, the bustling road- In response, the police demolished the stalls; the side traders have been replaced by a series of traders rioted; the police clamp-down escalated; angled parking bays, where cars fill the space the international news crews moved in. where the foot traffic, the vegetables, and the Home Affairs minister Stephen Kampyongo traders once were. went on air, saying how unfortunate it was that For the Kitwe municipality, this kind of trad- a “small clique of citizens can decide to break ing was a blemish. Getting rid of the traders the law when so many citizens have been coop- was in line with their ‘Keep Kitwe Clean’ cam- erative and helpful to the situation. I know these paign,52 aimed at polishing up downtown Kitwe matters touch on people’s livelihoods, but these as the local government tries to transform it into matters are also of life and death.” a modern African city, where supermarkets and The panic soon spilled over into Kitwe. shopping malls replace informal food traders.53 “Cholera looming at Chisokone Market” The forced removal of a handful of Kitwe mar- claimed a shrill Zambia Daily Mail headline, Before and after keteers is not an isolated incident. In fact, it is stating that the open-air market, a trading area just one small episode in a much wider and often for some 15 000 stallholders, was a high-risk The forced removal of less gentle manoeuvre against informal trading area owing to the “uncollected heaps of gar- the pavement traders that is common in many African cities, as CUP bage and blocked drains where maggots were in front of the Kitwe researcher Caroline Skinner found when she seen feasting on rotten tomatoes and veg- Shoprite recently began looking into the role of the informal food etables which were ‘lying all over the place”.56 was seen by many as economy and officials’ attitudes towards it.54 The first two cases of cholera were only reported being in line with the A few months before the businesswomen in Kitwe in January 2018,57 but health and safety municipality’s vision were moved from the front of the local Shoprite concerns around the market had already been of a ‘clean city’. But in downtown Kitwe with so little fanfare, an flagged over a year earlier when Kitwe mayor this view overlooks the outbreak of cholera about 350 kilometres south Christopher Kang‘ombe toured the facility in important role that the in the capital, Lusaka, threw the state into panic. November 2016 and found it to be no longer informal food economy In an effort to quarantine the disease, the city “habitable for trading due to the deteriorating plays within the health turned on the informal market traders. infrastructure coupled with poor sanitation”.58 of a city. Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial dis- Kang’ombe called for Kitwe to take similar ease, which is carried by water and food, and measures to those in Lusaka, first banning all

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street sales of fresh foods such as meat, chicken, decades. Caroline Skinner, a specialist in in- food TRADERS in and around and fish in January 2018, according to the web- formal economies, and her CUP colleague Dr chisokone market, KITWE: 2016 site Zambia Reports.59 Gareth Haysom did a headcount: in 2002, the Next, roadside food sales were banned. Then, South African supermarket chain Shoprite had blantyre rd the city demolished more than 1 000 stalls in 77 retail stores in 13 African countries, exclud- LANGASHE ST KANYANTA ave Chisokone Market.60 Finally, local government ing those already operating in South Africa. announced that the entire market would be shut By 2012, the chain had expanded to 168 stores down so that the municipality could clean it up, in 18 countries. By August 2013, the chain had luangwa ave again justifying this as a way to avoid a cholera extended its reach “at the rate of one new store outbreak.61 every two weeks to reach 193 outlets. Due to su- In the newspaper article, the city acknowledg- permarket expansion, by 2013 there were 3 741 es its responsibility to improve infrastructure stores in sub-Saharan Africa”.64 enos chombe rd and service delivery to the market by upgrading Supermarkets have not just mushroomed langashe st drainage systems and refuse removal services, in middle-class suburbs in southern Africa, and improving the water supply to nearby toi- but are also spreading into lower-income com- lets. But in the aftermath, there do not appear to munities. This should be a boon for the hungry have been any developments on this front. urban poor, the theory goes, because supermar- Once the market was shut down in early 2018, kets benefit from economies of scale and the there was talk of replacing the facility with a heft of their purchasing power. They should be argyll ave US$145 million ‘two-storey, ultra-modern mar- able to pass on their lower prices to the cash- ket place and bus station’.62 strapped shopper.65 “The outbreak of cholera… is a blessing in dis- The reality looks a bit different, though, ar- guise because then it gives us a wake-up call to gues Skinner, because supermarkets are often Kitwe retail clusters change the approach in addressing the issues,” not catering for the realities that shape the buy- Kitwe district commissioner Binwell Mpun- ing habits of a poorer family. Big chains might This map of Kitwe ON RD du told the press.63 “At Chisokone Market, we stock better-quality foods in places, but these shows where the food will have to make very tough decisions, you will are often more expensive than smaller inde- retailers have clustered

KINGST obote ave agree that when we decided to remove vendors pendent retailers. Or their bulk items might be in Chisokone Market, from the Central Business District there was cheaper, gram for gram, but the volumes they the large main market an uproar from marketeers on the decision we are sold in still makes the single-item purchase in the city centre, and

one ave independence ave made, but today we are vindicated.” too expensive for a poorer family. the spread of street

ok Chisokone Market Chisokone By this stage, Kitwe health services had only In 2012, urban food geographer Dr Jane Bat- traders near the formal MATUKA AVE recorded three cases of cholera in the city. tersby and her colleague Stephen Peyton took retail and transport chik a closer look at the kinds of foods supermar- connections. kets were stocking in the stores operating in Rise of the supermarket; lower-income neighbourhoods around Cape dominance of informal Town.66 They found that these foods tended to be less healthy than in the stores operating in shoprite traders wealthier suburbs, meaning that poorer fami-

zambia way The rise of the supermarket in the past half cen- lies did not necessarily have better access to oxford road tury – those shops that specialise in groceries nutritious foods as a result of the arrival of the and household goods, and now operate largely as supermarket chain in that neighbourhood. If national or international chains with branches anything, this accelerated the dietary shift to- across the region – are a hallmark of the modern wards cheaper, less healthy, highly processed food system. and sugary foods, which is linked to a host of kitwe This model for food retailing has literally health complications (see Chapter 2: Big is From the Kitwe retail mapping station exploded into southern African cities in recent Beautiful, page 37).

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Who’s to blame for food poisoning?

Early in 2017, an outbreak of the “This case shows up something introduce compulsory safety stand- food-borne illness listeriosis in South curious about the food system,” says ards for processed meats.70 Africa shook the local food indus- CUP’s Dr Jane Battersby. “The formal A shortage of environmental health try. This form of food poisoning is food sector is supposedly so tightly inspectors also lies at the heart of caused by a particularly hardy listeria controlled, regulated and monitored the problem. In the South African bacteria – one that can survive even for food safety, yet this is where the context, this is the function of local in refrigerated and zero-oxygen en- outbreak came from.” government, but there is now a short- vironments – and causes symptoms This challenges the assumption age of 3 300 such officers, according to similar to flu or meningitis. that food from the formal sector is the country’s Health Minister Aaron By mid-May 2018, the state’s safe, while food from the informal Motsoaledi. In response to the liste- National Institute for Communicable sector is supposedly unsafe. riosis outbreak, Motsoaledi called for Diseases (NICD) confirmed a total “When it comes to testing for food the health safety responsibilities to of 1 039 cases of the disease and 200 safety, the informal sector is very easy be handed back to the national health deaths.67 to access, but the formal food sector department so that it could ensure Most of these cases were linked to often closes off access for inspection,” better enforcement.71 l a meat processing plant in Polokwane Battersby explains. “This shows that province, owned by the corporate there’s actually a lack of transparency giant Tiger Brands. The higher-risk and access of the formal sector to test foods produced by this facility are for food safety.” various ready-to-eat processed meats, The Zambia cholera story is the such as polony and sausages, which counterpoint to this, she says. generally are not heated before eating, “In the case of the cholera out- meaning bacteria won’t be killed off break, informal traders were blamed by high temperatures. for the disease. But as our colleague Genetic testing linked about 90% Dr Gilbert Siame explains, it was of the reported cases with this single actually a problem with the water facility, and while Tiger Brands system, which is a municipal govern- initially contested the claims, it ance function. It wasn’t the traders Ground zero eventually acknowledged that its who were the source of the out- The largest ever recorded plant, where the brand Enterprise is break.” global outbreak of the produced, was the source of the con- In March 2018, South Africa’s listeriosis bacterium, tamination.68 Trade and Industry Minister Rob which causes a type of The World Health Organization Davies criticised big business for food poisoning, came (WHO) confirmed that this was the resisting efforts by the National from an industrial largest outbreak of the disease ever Regulator for Compulsory Specifica- processed meat plant in recorded globally.69 tions (NRCS), four years earlier, to South Africa in 2017.

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more on informal retailers to buy their food. The reality is that poorer families People are not just doing most of their grocery shopping with street traders, they are also buy- are still buying most of their day- ing most of their take-away foods here. A similar previous study that looked at grocery-shopping to-day groceries and ready-to-eat habits in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Mali, South Africa, Uganda and Burkina Faso, found foods from informal traders, while that adults got as much as half their daily food trying to benefit from the bulk- in the form of street foods (from 13% to 50%), and the figures were similar for children (they buying benefits of big formal shops were getting from 13% to 40% of their food from Day to day street traders). Street foods account for up to when they can half of people’s daily recommended protein in- Lower income families take in these communities.73 do most of their grocery From a public-health perspective, this mat- shopping with informal Is something similar happening in Ep- ters. Local governments need to find ways to en- traders, such as home worth, Kisumu and Kitwe, the CUP research- courage people to eat street foods, writes Skin- shops and street ers wanted to know? When they visited these ner, but with the proviso that they favour the vendors. cities, they wanted to see where people, par- consumption of healthy traditional foods. ticularly poorer families, were doing their These recent visits to Kisumu, Kitwe and Ep- grocery shopping: were they spending their worth confirm findings from a 2008 and 2009 Most fREquently used sources money with the informal traders, or were they study by the African Food Security Urban Net- of food, kisumu: 2016 shopping down the supermarket aisle? What work (AFSUN), where the University of Cape were they buying? And did their spending pat- Town was a lead partner, which showed how de- 800 Top ten terns confirm what most think they know pendent lower-income families are on informal about the food habits of urban Africans, or not? trading. Looking at poorer families in 11 sub- In 2016, when families Here’s what they found. Supermarkets tend to Saharan African cities, the AFSUN study found in Kisumu, Kenya, stock staple foods in large volumes. They also that 70% of households get their food from in- 600 were asked where they have a bigger range of processed foods, par- formal outlets; and the bigger the food gap is in had got their food in ticularly international branded products, and their homes, the more dependent they are on in- 74 the preceding year, be ‘Western’ cuts of meat. There are regional dif- formal retailers. This is where people do most 400 it from a market or a ferences, of course, but the trends are similar: of their day-to-day or weekly shopping. But they non-market source, informal traders in Kisumu tend to stock mostly are not using informal food outlets exclusively: overwhelmingly they fresh foods, cereals and indigenous foods, while more than three quarters of households (79%) said that they did the supermarkets stock more processed foods. said they also shop at their local supermarket, 200 their regular grocery However in Kitwe, supermarkets such as the often once a month, to stock up on bulk staples. shopping at a kiosk or Shoprite mentioned earlier in the trader evic- The reality is that poorer families are still home shop. According to tion story are responding to customer needs buying most of their day-to-day groceries and 0 this survey, people tend by stocking the kinds of indigenous foods that ready-to-eat foods from informal traders, while Number Kiosk/ Supermarket Market in Butcher in Grinding Mini Kiosk/ tuck Wholesaler Restaurant Food to shop at supermarkets previously were only sold outside by street side trying to benefit from the bulk-buying benefits of house- house Kisumu Kisumu mill in market in seller/ in Kisumu in Kisumu sent by once a week. People vendors.72 of big formal shops when they can. holds shop in Kisumu Kisumu vendor/ relatives Kisumu trader/ in rural are using informal The CUP researchers also found that when These shopping habits are not only driven by hawker in areas in and formal markets at people in these neighbourhoods are grocery how much cash a family has at any given time of At least five days a week Kisumu Kenya different times of the shopping, they use both kinds of retailers – su- the month, though. The basic kitchen appliances At least once a week month, and for different permarkets and informal traders – but at dif- people have at home, and whether or not they At least once a month reasons. ferent times of the month, and for different rea- have running water and a working kitchen sink, At least once in six months sons. But, overwhelmingly, poorer families rely or electricity, also drive their shopping behaviour. At least once a year From the Kisumu household survey

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Shopping on the run

Many street traders choose to set up shop close to where there is plenty of foot traffic, such as near to taxi ranks or train stations. This is good for business, and convenient for customers.

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Smaller is better for tight budgets

Most poor families can’t afford to bulk-buy when they do their grocery shopping, because they don’t have the cash, or they don’t have a fridge at home and they can’t afford to have food standing about and spoiling. They tend to buy smaller quantities of food on a day-to-day basis. Informal traders meet this need by ‘bulk-breaking’: buying regular-sized products of maize meal or rice, for instance, and repackaging them in smaller units. This food might work out to be more expensive, gram for gram, relative to that sold in a local supermarket, but cash-strapped families can afford to buy it in smaller units. “This shows up the need for families to be able to buy smaller units that are more in line with their Break it down incomes, or the infrastructure realities at home,” explains CUP’s Dr Jane Even though bulk-broken Battersby. items might be more Kitwe retailers have started bulk- expensive gram for gram breaking, too, in response to their than supermarket stock, customers’ needs, and found they now the smaller unit sizes that get higher patronage as a result.75 l traders sell makes them more affordable for people with less cash to spend. Informal traders are also often willing to haggle over the price, or give a regular customer credit.

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Options everywhere

Informal food outlets dominate the food environment in Epworth, showing how responsive traders are harare to customers’ needs, and how vibrant this alternative economy is in terms of giving people a livelihood. Researchers recommend that city policies and planning should support informal food markets by providing the right From the Epworth retail mapping Epworth retail typologies map infrastructure and service delivery. They LEGEND should also allow traders Epworth Wards Down the aisle to operate close to where Roads their customers are, Supermarkets were Rail Lines usually pedestrian believed to be a boon for traffic moving around poorer communities shopping malls, Store Typologies because they would supermarkets, and Butchery pass the benefits of their urban transport hubs. General Dealer bulk-buying capacity Grinding Mill on to the consumer. Market Stand Vendor In reality, they speed Mobile Vendor up the ‘nutritional Street Vendor transition’, nudging Vendor at Intersection people towards cheaper, Tuck Shop branded, processed foods. Informal traders Superette still tend to stock more Wholesaler fresh produce. House Shop

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quickly, which makes them look reliable and Supermarkets aren’t always helps build trust, and many still sell mostly non- processed and fresh foods (although this may be passing on the benefits of changing). A curious relationship is emerging between their bulk-buying power supermarket chains and the poorer families living in the neighbourhoods that these chains are directly to poorer households targeting as part of their expansion into new markets. Supermarkets aren’t always passing on the benefits of their bulk-buying power directly to poorer households (although informal Few poorer families have fridges at home, traders might be doing so indirectly, by using which means they can’t risk buying fresh and supermarkets as wholesale suppliers and then perishable foods in bulk. They therefore buy bulk-breaking items down to smaller, more af- them on a daily basis and use them quickly be- fordable units). They aren’t bringing healthier, fore they spoil. Informal traders sell these types fresher produce into these communities at low- of foods in smaller quantities, and within walk- er prices. They aren’t necessarily making these ing distance of people’s homes, so families buy neighbourhoods more resilient against hunger from them rather than the supermarkets. or long-term malnutrition. Despite the growing reach of supermarkets, In fact, if anything, the CUP researchers have the big players have not replaced the many small shown clearly over the years that supermarkets informal traders in these communities. Time are, in one respect, undercutting the nutritional and again, the evidence from AFSUN and the wellbeing in these communities by nudging CUP researchers confirms this: poorer house- people away from healthier, more diverse, tra- holds lean heavily on their local informal road- ditional foods, towards an ‘industrial’ diet that side trader and grocer for most of their food.76 looks aspirational and modern, but actually These independent and unlicensed trad- leaves so many people hungry, heavy, and sick. ers are good at meeting their customers’ needs, How is this happening, though, if most people partly because they are more agile than super- are still doing their grocery shopping with infor- markets.77, 78, 79 Open-air traders and informal mal traders, who tend to sell more of the fresh or markets have flexible and longer operating traditional foods? hours than the formal grocer shops. They set up According to Battersby, when people do shop shop close to where their main customers are, in supermarkets for their occasional bulk-buy- Job market mostly where the foot traffic passes by in poorer ing of staples such as maize or oil, they’re ex- neighbourhoods, as well as in city centres, often posed to ultra-processed foods. “This makes it The informal food near shopping malls or supermarkets, and at more likely that these foods will be normalised economy includes key transport hubs such as taxi ranks and train for people, or even become something that they transporters, processors, stations. Informal stallholders often buy their aspire to.” shopkeepers, take- stock in bigger volumes, sometimes even from This globalising of the food system is also be- away food retailers supermarkets which they treat as wholesal- ginning to spill over into the informal sector, she and the like. Their ers, and then ‘bulk break’ items of food down says, where packaged foods sometimes crowd takings may be largely to smaller package sizes to sell at a price that out fresh fruit and veggies in some of the stalls invisible in terms of the meets the shopper’s tight budget (see Smaller on pavements and in open-air markets. municipality’s fiscus, but is better for tight budgets, page 68). They are it is a significant source more likely to build personal relationships with Jobs, jobs, jobs of jobs for many city- their customers and often allow their regulars to Returning to that image of the trader in her pat- living people. buy on credit. They tend to restock their stalls terned chitenge skirt, captured in a momentary

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transaction with a businessman on the pave- convenient, cheap, and quite a big part of many ment in front of Shoprite in Kitwe: the exercise urban Africans’ daily diet. And informal waste of mapping the food system in these three cities collectors and recyclers take care of the tail-end doesn’t only show that informal traders are a of the food system. key part of the engine room that keeps the food system and the urban economy ticking over. Ac- cording to Skinner, the informal food economy Driven out is also one of the largest employers in sub-Sa- By the height of the Zambian cholera outbreak haran Africa after the agricultural sector, where in January 2018, Lusaka-based Dr Gilbert Keeping it clean 53% of non-agricultural employment is in this Siame said he was throwing out about five tons part of the economy.80 Across the region, nearly of tomatoes in ten days because the markets in The Lusaka cholera two thirds of those who find work in the informal Lusaka had shut down and he had no way of sell- outbreak revealed city- sector are women (59%). This boosts a family’s ing his produce. level attitudes towards food access, not just by making sure that some- Siame wears two hats: he runs a small farm in informal markets, which one in a household is employed and has money Lusaka where he grows tomatoes and keeps pigs, are often regarded as to buy food. More than that, Skinner says: when but he’s also part of the CUP team and works as dirty and a likely source women are in charge of the household budget, a lecturer and researcher at the University of of disease. The reality they’re more likely to spend that money on food, Zambia, and he’s affiliated with the People’s is that it is the city’s further boosting a family’s likelihood of keeping Process on Housing and Poverty in Zambia responsibility to make hunger at bay.81 (PPHPZ), part of Slum Dwellers International sure these markets are In a city like Kisumu, for instance, where (SDI) in Lusaka. He has an insider’s view on the properly serviced with unemployment is now at about 30%, this often question of urban informality, not only in the electricity, water and invisible part of the food system employs just food sector, and in city settlements in general. waste removal, so that over half (52%) of the city’s working population Siame’s crop losses show just how far they can be sanitary and “up to 70% of the working population in in- along the food value chain the fallout has for both traders and formal settlements”, according to the numbers been for people’s livelihoods, beyond just the customers. coming through in the CUP surveys.82 traders in the informal city markets whose Informal operators are active throughout the stalls were shut down with the city’s ef- food value chain. They are key to the process- forts to quarantine the cholera outbreak. ing and packaging that happens along the way, Back in Kitwe, though, when its mayor Christo- Skinner wrote in a paper for the CUP research pher Kang’ombe toured the Chisokone Market team in November 2016,83 such as through in November 2016 and declared it unfit for trad- small-scale catering, or bulk-breaking supplies ing, a local news photographer captured dra- into smaller packages. Informal transporters matic pictures of city officials picking their way use taxis and small hired trucks to ship food around piles of uncollected garbage heaped up around. Street and market traders, spaza shops, along the sides of the dirt roads weaving through and home tuck shops are integral to the informal the marketplace and clogging up stormwater retail space. Long-standing practices of milling drains.85 A government official told the press staples and grains such as maize or peanuts that the council would take care of the backed- continue on the city streets, but now vendors up drains, improve garbage removal and make are helping time-pressed customers even more sure the public toilets had enough water. by selling them pre-cooked beans, boiled milk, Skinner says that concerns about sanitation dried and smoked fish, cooked porridge, barbe- in informal markets in Africa have long been cued meats, and other cooked snacks.84 Infor- used as a reason to shut them down and margin- mal restaurants and shebeens – unlicensed bars alise them from the local economy. One study that also often sell food – make up the informal that she reviewed counted more than 50 cases consumer space. Ready-to-eat street foods are where street traders were evicted from their

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A basket of goodies written by Robyn Bowden

Many shops and some informal The large size and weight of traders in South Africa put together hampers makes them difficult to monthly hampers, also known as transport. Taxis charge a fare per 10 ‘combos’, for people wanting to buy kilograms of food transported, which in bulk. These hampers are usually adds substantially to the cost of the made up of long-lasting foods that hamper. While both formal and infor- people generally buy at the beginning mal retailers sell hampers for compet- of the month when they receive their itively similar prices, the distributed grants and monthly salaries. While nature of informal retailers allows the contents of each hamper vary women to buy these hampers close to from shop to shop, a standard hamper their homes and avoid the additional consists of the ‘big five’: a 10-kilogram transport costs. l pack of white rice, maize meal, sugar and flour, and two litres of cooking oil. Robyn Bowden is an independent food Although both formal and informal systems researcher who conducted this retailers put these hampers together, study as part of a master’s degree with the contents originate from Big Food the Sustainability Institute, Stellen- bosch. companies. The hampers are nutritionally poor, but they do ensure satiety for a household through the month. For women, who are generally in charge of food, hampers allow them to control household expenditure. By buying hampers at the beginning of the month, they can ensure that income One-stop shopping is spent primarily on food before it can be spent on other less important Buying a hamper of items, such as clothing, airtime, or al- goods at the start of the month is a great way cohol. Extra income earned through- for a family to manage out the month through informal work a tight budget. Most of allows women to add to these ham- these store-assembled pers with more nutritious foods, such hampers are made up of as vegetables or meat. the ‘big five’: white rice, maize meal, sugar, flour, and cooking oil.

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trading spaces in different African cities over a fort. The challenges, in his opinion, were about three-year period. This was happening in Cairo, broader issues around the politics of water man- Harare, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Luanda, where agement, rather than the informal food system some evictions involved considerable force. which was blamed for the outbreak. City officials used different ways to enforce “Right now, we have hundreds of thousands these removals. Sometimes it involved ‘large- of people in the city who are still using water scale violent evictions’, where traders’ stands from shallow wells, because they don’t have ac- were demolished; in other cases, it was less vio- cess to the treated water supply,” he wrote to his lent and involved moving stallholders to places colleagues in January 2018, “and this well water that were far from their customers or didn’t is said to be contaminated by the cholera bacte- have supporting facilities; sometimes it involved ria. But it’s also rumoured and widely circulated “lower level harassment of vendors by predatory on social media that the municipal water supply state officials, often facilitated by legislation”.86 in Lusaka is contaminated with cholera, too.” Planners and other city officials often see This could explain why some formal food informal traders as ‘backward’, argue Battersby outlets in the capital also had to be shut down. and colleague Prof Vanessa Watson. They’re Shops such as the Hungry Lion on Cairo Road viewed as a blight on the vision of the modern, and at Kulima Tower were closed. A few take- developing African city, and as a source of ‘dirt’ away joints were closed in the Levy Mall, includ- and ‘disease’.87 This often results in policies and ing an Asian Hut, a Wimpy, and a Hungry Lion. decisions that favour malls and supermarkets, The Kumushi Restaurant at the showgrounds giving them priority through planning, which also had its doors closed for a time. allows developers to build gleaming new devel- Both the formal and informal food systems opments near the city centre or wealthier neigh- in Lusaka were affected. There was specula- bourhoods, while leaving informal traders on tion that this could be because these facilities the edge of the economy.88 were using contaminated water, or that the staff Yes, there are health risks associated with handling the food in the restaurants might have the informal markets. This is particularly true come from cholera-affected areas, mostly infor- An interconnected for those trading fresh or cooked foods such as mal settlements. “Or it could be a combination web meat, fish and milk, because they’re working of both factors,” says Siame. with risky perishable foods in premises that of- There were unconfirmed reports that lab The food system is an ten don’t have good facilities such as safe stor- tests might have shown that the municipal wa- “interconnected web age or adequate refrigeration. They may also ter system was positive for the cholera bacteria. of activities, resources not have clean running water, or ways to keep “There’s a lot of politicking at the moment, and people that extends their facilities hygienic. Waste removal services because water supply is a government issue. across all domains might not be operating and the traders are de- People in Lusaka are directing their anger at involved in providing pendent on the city to keep nearby public toilets government, local and national, for repeated human nourishment clean and in good working order. poor service levels in the water sector.” and sustaining health, But the CUP team points out that the stall- Government’s response, he says, has been to including production, holders aren’t responsible for putting these try and distance itself from this responsibility, processing, packaging, sorts of services in place. Rather, it is the role of and stem any likely uprising by food vendors. distribution, marketing, the city to keep these trading spaces clean, serv- “This is causing a real economic crisis. Mil- consumption, and iced and sanitary. lions of people have been cut off from their disposal of food”, From Siame’s perspective as both a supplier livelihood,” he wrote in January 2018. “We’re according to the book of fresh produce into Lusaka’s food system and throwing away all these tomatoes, because of Introduction to Food as an academic studying it, he says the process this. Our farm has been doing great, but now we Systems: Food, Farms of addressing the cholera crisis in Lusaka was have nowhere to sell our produce as markets are and Community91. fraught with confusion and misdirected ef- closed and guarded by the military.”

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4 Chicken pieces

In a city like Cape Town, you can buy chicken on just about every street corner, whether it’s braaied chicken claws from a pavement take-away, or plastic-wrapped breasts from an upmarket superette. Chicken is one of the most popular animal proteins for South Africans. We eat about 1 725 000 tons of it every year (that includes chicken meat for our pets).89 It’s not clear exactly how much of this meat is locally produced and how much is imported, but we estimate that about a third of it comes from abroad.

The pathways along which Photo essays by our poultry travels are Masixole Feni, complex. Eggs from the Usana words by Jane free-range chicken farm attersby and outside Stellenbosch go into B elite, ethical food markets. Robyn Park-Ross Once the hens are retired, many of them are sold to traders in the informal sector outside Stellenbosch who deal specifically in live birds. Both sets of sales – eggs and retired birds – are dependent *All necessary on long-standing personal permissions were relationships, which is unusual sought and granted in a value chain, as the for the compilation of following four stories illustrate. these photo essays.

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Cape Town-based photojournalist Masixole Feni dependent ‘micro-convenience’ neighbourhood decided to find out where some of the Mother stores, for similar reasons. City’s popular chicken comes from, and how it This might explain why it’s so hard to work gets here. out precisely how much of South Africa’s chick- Feni tracked four value chains that supply en meat is farmed locally, how much is shipped in chicken meat to his home city to see what this can from Brazil and the United States, and how that teach us about the local food system. In each case, impacts on local production, price, and quality. he started with the customer and tried to track Most opaque of all was where the chicken the value chain back upstream to see how close came from. But similarly hard to track, was he could get to the source of the live animals. where all this chicken meat goes after the re- On this journey, he discovered that it’s not that tailer has sold it to the customer. Who ends up easy to travel the routes that feed chicken protein eating it, where, and how? into our urban food system. There are many ob- These obstacles present themselves as ‘gaps’ stacles along the way that make it difficult to con- in the following photo essays, telling us that the nect the different nodes in the value chain, or find food system is not as easy to chart as we’d like a neat route from farm to fork. to think, and that the food system can be hidden Feni wasn’t able to get onto one of the chick- from us in the most unexpected ways. en farms that sell live birds to informal traders because of concerns about avian flu. He also couldn’t get beyond the supermarket that sold How much are we the packets of chicken feet to traders because store managers were unwilling to engage. And he actually allowed to couldn’t get to the source of the wholesalers who supplied frozen chickens to the spaza shops or in- know about our food system?

The good life

The chickens at the Usana farm are pasture reared, meaning that they live outdoors and eat a natural diet of grass and bugs. This makes their eggs more nutritious than battery- farmed eggs.

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Off to slaughter Live birds A second tier of traders enters Many Capetonians shop ‘for the pot’ the picture. Operating from from informal traders who deal in live 4 Khayelitsha, these traders chickens. 1 buy the birds from the live These traders buy birds, often chicken traders and transport retired laying hens, from the gate at them to the nearby Site C poultry farms on the outskirts of the taxi rank about 13 kilometres city and transport them to their trading Out in the open away, where they slaughter site. Since the recent avian flu outbreak, Source? the birds, clean them, and there has been a shortage of birds for These sellers usually pick prepare them for sale to this market. Traders say they can’t up new stock on Saturday passing commuters. Traders buy directly from farms as quarantine mornings and bring it to their are shown here unloading measures are in place, meaning they well-known trading site on their just-purchased stock in have to buy from a middleman – a Govan Mbeki Road on the Khayelitsha. wholesaler – which eats into their own edge of Philippi, about 25 profits. kilometres from Cape Town’s There are different groups of people city centre. These traders, who frequent these traders. Some mostly women, work long customers come here to shop for their hours seven days a week. own meals, happy to slaughter and They do business in the ready the birds for the pot themselves. outdoors with no shelter from Church and community groups are an- the harsh elements, including other regular customer. Alternatively, the notorious ‘Cape Doctor’, some of these birds are sold on to a the southeasterly wind that second tier of traders, who slaughter scours the peninsula in and prepare the whole or portioned summer. uncooked chicken for sale from a road- They pay ‘promoters’ – side stall in other parts of the city, like usually younger men – to these at the Site C taxi rank in Khay- encourage passing customers elitsha. This story shows the impor- to buy from them specifically. tance of traders who cater to different These salesmen then help customer needs across the city. customers by loading the birds into cars or taxis. They The flu 2 are paid a set fee, rather than 4 For the pot a commission, which means The recent outbreak of bird flu has hit the that leaves the traders no other viable option the women traders may make Many individuals, families live chicken traders in this story hard. for sourcing their stock. This wholesaler is a loss due to multiple price- and church and community Where in the past some traders would travel a few minutes’ drive from where the traders takers along the value chain. groups travel to these to the farms to buy birds, farmers now sell, but was unwilling to reveal the source of traders to buy their live claim that they have no birds to sell. The its birds. This extra link in the value chain birds, choosing to prepare traders suspect that the farms are choosing increases the cost of the birds and squeezes the chickens for the pot to rather sell directly to larger operators the women’s profit margins. This shows how themselves. In this way, some with more bargaining power, such as the a shock in the system, like an outbreak of chickens exit the value chain wholesaler pictured above. This allows these disease, can hit the smaller players in the 3 here, while others still have operators to established a level of monopoly system the hardest. some way to go.

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People on the move

Traders take great care in displaying the various chicken cuts to attract customer interest. This kind of stall gives convenient and nutritious options for commuters who may not 5 Sum of the parts have time to travel to the live chicken traders, some Once the birds are 13 kilometres away, or to slaughtered at the prepare the birds for the pot preparation site, just behind themselves. These commuters the taxi rank, they’re scalded can pick up whatever cut they in boiling water to loosen the want on their way home from feathers, and plucked. They’re their long day of work and then portioned into different travel. cuts to cater to customer preferences.

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Where’s it from? Finger food 3 Some of the street chain that operates in Popular snack Chicken feet are a popular street traders in Mfuleni who Philippi, Khayelitsha and snack, part of what we call the ‘walk- sell braaied chicken Mfuleni, outside Cape The trader cooks a batch of ie talkie’ two-pack: birds’ heads and feet source their bags of Town. But this particular chicken feet and wings over feet. They’re part of a vibrant trade ‘walkie talkies’ from a Goal shop manager wasn’t the coals at his open-air 4 of poultry offcuts, including gizzards, outlet in Mfuleni. Goal willing to engage with the stall in Mfuleni. He has set that make it mostly into informal is a small supermarket researchers, so they weren’t up his stall to catch people All the rage markets in different ways, where able to find out where this passing by on foot through they’re sold packaged, either ready specific batch of ‘walkie the neighbourhood. Poultry Braaied chicken feet are to eat, fresh, or frozen. They’re not talkies’ originated. ‘offcuts’ such as chicken cheap, portable, and tasty. commonly found in supermarkets in This stock was packaged feet are popular throughout Anitha Binqose enjoys her wealthier parts of the city. but not branded, so it’s the informal markets, chicken feet right where likely that it came from with some of the live she’s just bought them, the supermarket’s own chicken traders also selling but they’re particularly butchery section. Chicken uncooked feet offcuts. popular with kids on the suppliers tend to be way home from school. efficient about using up the entire bird, leaving nothing to waste and finding markets for every bit of the Source? 2 carcass.

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The ‘house’ brand Upmarket birds: The Woolworths brand of poultry Free-range to products available in its stores factory to fridge countrywide comes from three different suppliers. One of these There’s a neat, industrial, and tightly is Elgin Free Range Chickens, regulated conveyor belt-type system which has six poultry farms that takes broilers from the farm, and around the Elgin and Grabouw delivers boneless, skinless, clingfilm- area, about an hour’s drive east wrapped protein pieces to our local of Cape Town. Elgin Free Range high-end supermarkets. It’s an efficient Chickens has its own abattoir, and well-oiled industrial machine, and processing and packaging centre 4 the outcome for the consumer is a guar- in Grabouw, so by the time the 2 anteed standard of quality and safety. poultry leaves the business, it’s ‘Moving air’ 3 In this very clinical process, the con- packaged and ready for sale. End of the line sumer and animal are distanced from They sell predominantly to Woolworths’ Cape Town one another, and the essential ‘chick- Woolworths and deliver to the distribution centre is tightly Only a few hours after leaving enness’ of the product disappears. chain’s Cape Town distribution regulated, and engineered for the Elgin Free Range Chickens centre at least once a day, efficiency, temperature stability, processing and packaging sometimes more. When they and the best use of space. The facility, and after passing deliver, they have a 15-minute- chain has even designed its own through the distribution centre, window arrival time at the shipping crates to reduce wasted the chicken arrives on the shelves distribution centre. If they do space in its trucks, “otherwise of this Woolworths supermarket, 2 not arrive in this time slot, the you’re paying to move air”, the Waterstone store in Somerset product might be rejected. according to the distribution West. Heart of the matter service manager. In the end, it’s 1 about maximising profit and Woolworths has three ensuring food safety. distribution centres in South Africa – here, in Montague Gardens in Cape Town, and two more in Johannesburg and Durban. This one employs 700 people. Elgin Free Range Chickens products are trucked to this Cape Town centre, which services the 76 Woolworths stores around the province, as well as to the other two distribution centres. Staff monitor all products’ temperature carefully.

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A simple meal Buying in bulk This is an everyday story of a simple but nutritious meal: frozen chicken John Yusuf stocks up at All in one pieces bought from the corner spaza a wholesaler on Durban shop in Mfuleni. The shop’s Somali Source? Road in Bellville (below) Yusuf provides an array owner, John Yusuf, buys his stock about once a month, of products at his small from a Somali-run wholesaler in Bel- depending on sales. He neighbourhood spaza shop. lville, normally towards month-end. buys ‘Mamas Pride These products include food The convenience of his store’s loca- Chicken’ and ‘Mummies like the frozen chicken pieces, tion means that customers can walk Chicken Portions’ but also cleaning products, here to do their grocery shopping. 1 frozen and in bulk. The toiletries and other household The meat is affordable, convenient, researchers weren’t able essentials. The survival of and wholesome, and people can buy to find out where the his business depends on his each day what they plan to eat that wholesaler sourced this ability to cater directly to the evening. stock. needs and buying habits of These types of wholesalers the people in the immediate 3 are important sources of area. a range of mainly food products for traders all around Cape Town. 4 Safe and sound

Many convenience stores in communities like Yusuf’s are vulnerable to crime, so shopkeepers like him operate behind makeshift security grilles. Most of his customers, such as fellow Mfuleni resident Khonono Koopman, use this private spaza shop because of its convenience.

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Dinner is served

Back at home, Khonono Koopman prepares and serves this deliciously 6 simple meal.

5 Around the corner

Khonono Koopman takes the short walk from the spaza shop back to her home. The fact that the store is around the corner and has long trading hours allows her to shop as she needs things.

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5 Kapenta Road

No city is an island, surviving as a discrete and self- contained economy that meets all its own needs. It is tethered to wider trade networks that may start 100 kilometres, or half a planet, away. The foods that end up in our city market places, and how much that food costs, are shaped by global and regional trade policies, and economic forces that might be far outside the minds of the people managing our cities and their local economies. Looking at the fish sold in the markets of Kitwe, Zambia, we explore the complex weave of global and regional trade routes that feed into our cities’ food markets and ultimately shape what arrives on our plates in a globalised world.

Silver skinned

Fish is one of the most affordable animal proteins in Zambia. In today’s globalised world, though, much of the fish sold at local markets may come from as far away as China.

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CHINA

Fridah Siyanga-Tembo’s mother knows how to cook fish. Most Zambians do, because freshwater fish from the region’s many lakes and rivers are a staple here in southern Africa, and one of the most affordable forms of protein. Fresh fish is delicious, of course, but since many people still don’t have fridges – either in the outdoor markets, or at home – they can’t keep it for long without it spoiling. So, processing and preserving fish as soon as it’s lifted from the water is the best way to give it a bit of a shelf life. Many routes to Fresh, smoked, sun-dried, or salted, when it market comes to cooking fish, east Africans will fry it, Mpulungu stew it, boil it, roast it, bake it, serve it with rel- The fish sold in Kitwe’s ish and vegetables, or simply spoon it over nshi- Samfya markets could come ma, a maize-meal porridge. You name it, there’s Kitwe from lakes within no shortage of ideas on how to prepare this local the region, such as favourite. ZAMBIA Indian Ocean Lake Kariba, about When Siyanga-Tembo was a little girl, and 450 kilometres south the family lived in Kafue Gorge where the gi- by road, or Lake ant hydropower station is, about 100 kilome- NAMIBIA Tanganyika, about tres south of Lusaka, traders would walk door to 1 000 kilometres door with fresh bream caught by local fisherman northeast by road, or it in the Kafue River. Her mother would scale and could have been shipped gut the fish, chop it into pieces, and fry it. Then Walvis in from the Namibian she’d cook up a gravy of onions and tomatoes, Bay coast, or even imported and add the fried fish to make a stew. frozen from China. A vegetable relish is popular for most people Having food coming here, and if a family’s budget allows, they’ll add in from many sources some form of meat protein to it, often fish. can boost a city’s food “You can also cook smoked fish like this,” the THE ROUTES TO MARKET resilience. 33-year-old environmental scientist says. “We

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don’t eat this preserved fish like a snack, but because it’s already almost cooked, we either fry it The take-home message here is up and add it to a gravy, or cook it up like a stew, so it gets really tender. Some people prefer to that local governments need to make the gravy for the fried fish separately.” Now that she is living with her husband in Lu- support informal markets more saka, Siyanga-Tembo doesn’t eat fish that much anymore. This is partly because she hasn’t quite than they currently are by giving taken her mother’s flair for cooking this kind of them the infrastructure and food, and partly because her husband tends to cook the fish. He has a ‘special nostalgia’ for his service delivery support they need family’s way of preparing kapenta, so he prefers to cook it himself. “Kapenta can be a bit sensitive. How long you leave it on the hob for determines if it goes hard, has one of the largest informal economies in crispy or soft. I don’t actually know what my hus- the country.90 For the poorer people in the city, band does to the fish. He doesn’t add any spice, maize and veggies are the bedrock of their diet, but he has a special technique that keeps it soft.” topped up with fish and meat when people have Today, Siyanga-Tembo’s fellow Zambians a bit of extra cash. (When Siyanga-Tembo and still eat the same kinds of fish as when she was her CUP colleagues spoke to people in Kitwe to a child: the smaller species such as Siavonga ka- get an idea of what they had eaten in their homes penta from Lake Kariba on the southern border, in the previous 24 hours, almost everyone said or Mpulungu kapenta lifted straight out of the they had eaten cereals, mostly maize (98%); waters of Lake Tanganyika in the north; a rain- most said they had eaten vegetables in that time bow of bream types; tilapia; although she says (83%); a third said they had eaten fish (33%); and there are fewer red-breasted bream and mbowa a quarter said they had eaten meat or chicken these days, because of overfishing. (24%).91) When Siyanga-Tembo signed up to do her But, as often happens for households on the master’s degree in environmental sciences breadline, as soon as food prices go up or they through the University of Cape Town in South run out of cash, they cut back on nutrient-rich Africa in 2015 and became part of the Consum- foods and fall back on a diet that is bulky but low ing Urban Poverty (CUP) team, she decided to in goodness – mostly starchy foods.92 take a look at where Zambia’s fish comes from Siyanga-Tembo’s expertise of zooming in on nowadays, how it gets to the markets, and who’s the supply chains that bring fish into Kitwe, Zam- buying and eating it. What she found hints at bia, helped feed into the CUP team’s process of just how much the world has changed since she charting the complicated network of modern glo- was a child, because the fish being sold at her bal and local trade shipping routes that shape the local fresh produce market could just as eas- kinds of staple foods that make it into the mar- ily have come by road from a small fishing boat kets in the three study cities, how much that food Longer shelf life that has trawled the shores of Lake Tanganyika costs, and how poorer city-living people respond 1 000 kilometres away, as it could have come off to the consequences of the various trade policies Preserving fish through an ocean-faring ship along the Namibian coast and market forces at play in the system. smoking, drying hunting for mackerel, or been shipped into the or salting it, gets country as frozen stock from a Chinese export The big five around the fact that harbour half a planet away. After mapping the food-buying patterns of the many people in these Kitwe is Zambia’s second largest city, with people in Kitwe, Kisumu and Epworth, it is cities don’t have good a population of just over half a million, and clear where these city dwellers are not getting refrigeration at home.

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and nutritional needs of the urban poor are tak- Poorer households often can’t en care of? To answer these questions, the CUP teams afford the imported fish in the took five of the most commonly eaten foods in their three focus cities, and tracked them back supermarkets because it’s sold in along their respective supply chains to map their sources and the routes they’d travelled volumes that make a single-item along to get to the markets. This also gave them purchase – say, one large bag a chance to overlay onto these maps an understanding of the kinds of global and regional containing lots of small frozen fish policy and market forces that might influence those trade routes and the commodities travel- – out of reach for their wallets ling along them. The researchers chose to map the value chains of maize meal (what people call ugali in Kenya, and nshima in Zambia), fish, vegeta- their food: from farmers growing crops or tend- bles, porridge and eggs. They found that these ing livestock within the boundaries of the city foods follow complicated value chains, with (see Chapter 1: The Hungry Season, page 15). many different actors operating on the respec- The take-home message is for policymakers not tive routes that the food travels along in order to try and plug the food gap by focusing only on to reach the various cities (see The routes to drawing up urban food-security policy that as- market, page 100). sumes all food will be grown within the borders The picture that emerges is that, in terms of of the city. food access and the urban poor, globalisation is People are buying most of their food. And a double-sided coin. they are getting it from many different sources, As discussed earlier in this book, globalisa- both in informal and formal markets. And we tion of trade has eaten away at our good nutri- now have a good idea why they are doing this tion like floodwaters stripping away topsoil (see (see Chapter 1: The Hungry Season, page 15, Chapter 2: Big is Beautiful, page 37). The ex- Spoiled for choice and Chapter 3: Cinderella Markets, page 57). plosion of industrial food processing and the big The take-home message here is that local gov- businesses that drive it has flooded much of the When poorer city- ernments need to support informal markets world with food-like products that have a long living people have more more than they currently are by giving them the shelf life, are cheap and tasty, and are packaged variety, in terms of infrastructure and service delivery support they and marketed to be desirable with their high- the cost of food such as need so they can operate cleanly and efficiently. status brands. They are often physically filling this fish on sale in their Local government also needs to allow market- in the short term, but nutritionally dead. Su- neighbourhood or the eers to set up their operations close to where permarkets are like the streams and tributaries portion sizes, they’re the customers are – near city centres, and close that feed these products into our cities, speed- more resilient. Thriving to the foot traffic in and around shopping malls, ing up our switch from traditional diets made up informal markets tend supermarkets, and public transport hubs such largely of more wholesome, fresh foods, to a diet to give this flexibility, as taxi ranks and train stations. that is less diverse and made up largely of these which is why researchers But what do we really know about the ori- industrial food-like products. recommend nurturing gins of the food that finally ends up in the local The industrialised food system has also informal traders. supermarket, or restaurant, in an open-air mar- brought a host of agricultural practices and ket stall, or on the barbecue grill of a street-food policies that nudge farmers towards pushing vendor? And how should local governments out volumes of staple foods rather than diverse plan for this so they can make sure that the food fresh foods, resulting in a food system packed

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Regional trade policies to protect local producers

Early in 2017, the Zambian govern- inconsistent. This, they said, forced ment announced an import ban on retailers to source from their own certain fresh fruit and vegetables. farmers down south. The Lusaka Times reported that the South African retail chains have Minister of Agriculture said this ban had a growing presence in southern followed lobbying by Zambian farm- Africa since the country opened to ers, who claimed that the imports global markets following the 1994 were hurting them.93 The ban mostly democratic elections and the lifting of applied to the type of produce that trade and political sanctions against local suppliers were growing, such as the country. The economic strength tomatoes, onions, carrots, mangoes, of these private corporates has given potatoes, pineapples, lemons, and them considerable bargaining power watermelons. when it comes to negotiating favour- The move was supported by the able regional trade agreements.95 public policy think-tank Policy Moni- But it wasn’t long after initiat- toring and Research Centre (PMRC), ing the import ban that the Zambian which said this move showed the government quickly reversed its state’s commitment to creating a decision, announcing that the policy “sustainable, diversified and com- contravened some of the country’s petitive agriculture sector, which has international trade agreements, ac- immense potential to improve the cording to the BBC News’ Kennedy livelihoods of the people”. The Small- Gondwe.96 Scale Farmers Union also supported The BBC report highlights con- Policy stand-off the ban, saying it was “good and long cerns that small-scale farmers aren’t overdue”.94 able to compete with larger commer- National trade policies But the push-back came from cial farming interests, partly owing to can have unexpected South African retail chains Shoprite “capacity constraints”. Protectionist consequences elsewhere and Food Lover’s Market, who told trade policies can ripple through a in the food value the Zambian press that local suppli- city’s food network, and shouldn’t be chain, as the Zambian ers were “unreliable” and “irregular” made without first making sure that government learned in terms of delivering produce to local suppliers and infrastructure can recently when it tried to fill the gap. l protect its local farmers their stores, and that the quality was by shutting down certain fresh produce imports from South Africa.

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with starchy energy, but not necessarily good pushing informal traders out of the urban food nutrition (see A staple diet is not a stable diet, market in some ways, and getting preferential page 30). treatment from local governments (see Chap- The flip side of the globalisation coin, though, ter 3: Cinderella Markets, page 57), they nev- is that international trade networks now mean ertheless still contribute to the food resilience the modern-day African city is not an island in of the urban poor. Poorer urbanites buy most of its own region anymore, but is connected to a their food from informal traders, but still shop complicated network of trade routes that have at supermarkets from time to time. And super- helped the urban poor by plugging so many of markets have become an important wholesale the hunger gaps. Commodities moving along supplier to informal traders, who capitalise on these networks allow calories to flow through the lower prices for bulk-buying, then repackage the entire system, all year around, overcoming this stock to meet the restrictions of the cash- normal seasonal dips in agricultural production, strapped shopper. or shortages linked to regional climate shocks To return to Siyanga-Tembo’s exercise of such as droughts. If avocados don’t grow in Na- mapping Zambia’s city fish supplies, it’s clear mibia, import them from Mozambique; if onions that poorer shoppers buy most of their fish from are out of season in northern Zambia, ship them informal markets.98 But while these informal in from South Africa. If the El Niño weather sys- traders are dependent on a diverse range of sup- tem brings regional drought to southern Africa, pliers – local suppliers, regional traders, and causing grain stocks to crash, governments can importers who bring in fish from as far afield as import a surplus from Russia or the USA. Namibia or China – it’s the imported fish com- The CUP researchers wanted to understand ing through formal markets that’s generally the different scales at which these food trade cheaper than similar kinds of fish caught locally. routes operate, whether they intersect at all, “Mackerel from Namibia, for instance, looks and what this means for food access for cash- similar to buka fish from Lake Tanganyika, and strapped city dwellers in this part of Africa. is cheaper than locally caught fish,” says Siyan- This matters, because it allows us to test old- ga-Tembo. er assumptions that regard global and local food These multiple supply chains create a di- flows as operating discretely of one another, ex- verse source of supply to formal and informal plains CUP researcher Dr Jane Battersby. markets that’s a boon for most poorer Kitwe By taking these big five food items across the households, because they ensure ample protein three cities, and tracking them back along their all year around, and usually at prices that people respective supply chains, the researchers found can afford on their tight budgets. that these supply routes are fluid, and that food From the perspective of poorer families, it Working together comes from many different places locally, re- doesn’t really matter where the fish comes from, gionally, and globally.97 They also found that as long as it’s affordable, says Siyanga-Tembo. Food travels into these imported foods often complement and support “People in Kitwe are buying their fish in su- cities along many local supply, in a way that fills the hunger gap for permarkets and in informal markets,” she says. different routes, some urban consumers. “But it’s mostly the middle and higher-income of which are taken The researchers also found that it wasn’t just families who are shopping in the supermarkets. care of by Big Food the trade routes themselves that crossed differ- Poorer families are still mostly buying at the companies, and some of ent scales and worked symbiotically, but that open-air markets.” which are run by small, the cities’ formal and informal markets, which Poorer households often can’t afford the im- independent operators. take delivery of the goods shipped to them from ported fish in the supermarkets because it’s sold Together, these parallel different parts of the world, have also negotiated in volumes that make a single-item purchase – food value chains keep a an interesting symbiosis. say, one large bag containing lots of small frozen city well fed. Even though supermarkets appear to be fish – out of reach for their wallets.

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Tomay-toh, tomah-toh

The tomatoes sold by an informal trader in the Chisokone Market in downtown Kitwe are red and bursting with ripeness. Yet those in the nearby Shoprite supermarket are still hard, and a tad on the green side. “Which of these tomatoes would you as a customer choose to buy?” asks CUP researcher Dr Jane Batters- by. “The answer tells a lot about how you live in the food system.” “The scale of the food system now, particularly with imports and exports happening as they do, means that it can supply consumers with the foods they need all year round,” she explains, “and it provides different market segments with different needs.” The tomatoes in the Kitwe market are usually locally grown and ready to eat, while the tomatoes in the supermarket are imported, and are put on the shelves with the view that they will still sit in someone’s kitchen for a few more days, waiting to ripen. The informal market tomatoes are targeting the lower-income consumer who is buying mostly to eat today, while the supermarket is targeting the wealthier consumer who might have a fridge and other storage means at home and can stock up with groceries. l

Salad days

Shoppers select fresh produce based on when they plan to eat it, and for how long they can safely store it.

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Strong man

Food passes through many hands on its journey from farm to fork, even in the informal sector. Middlemen often offer essential services, but also increase the food’s final price, and might also exert power in the value chain.

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This is where the informal fish traders come into their own. They will either buy the frozen stock directly from formal retailers who bought stock from the importers, and then repackage the thawed fish into smaller sizes that are more within the reach of a tighter budget. Or they will buy preserved and processed fish, which have a longer shelf life, from local fishermen or fellow traders, and sell the fish in smaller and more flexible volumes. “Traders will sell the smaller fish types by the container and at prices that meet a poorer family’s budget of, say, 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 kwacha. Compare that to a single bigger fish that might sell for 180 kwacha. That’s quite a lot of money for a poorer family,” Siyanga-Tembo says. These informal traders are more flexible in the pricing and the quantities they sell, and they’re also open to haggling a bit over the price. Siyanga-Tembo’s research also shows the importance of middlemen in the fish value chain when it comes to the final price of the product when it hits shop shelves: the more agents there are in the journey from net to plate, the greater the price increases along the way. Some traders try to work around this, which helps poorer consumers because it keeps the price of the fish down. “Some traders manage to reduce their prices by cutting out middlemen along the distribu-

Diversity is better

The more varied the range of foods in the market and the sources they come from, the more resilient the urban food system is. National and local governments need to nurture formal and informal markets, as well as the many trade routes the food travels along to reach the region’s cities.

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Red tape and rice: a story from the streets of Epworth

When it comes to food imports, red Zimbabwe imports as much as 95% tape has a big role to play in what of its rice, and most of the imports foodstuffs get imported into a coun- are either through the government’s try, by whom, and at what cost99, as a Grain Marketing Board, or through comparison between maize and rice private wholesalers and cross-border into Zimbabwe shows. traders. Most of the imports come The cost of permits to ship maize from China, Vietnam and Singapore, across the border in bulk, and the but also from neighbouring South complexity of the paperwork in- Africa and Mozambique. volved, discourages wholesalers The rice that travels across very from importing maize themselves. long value chains has higher trans- But smaller cross-border traders port costs, which are passed on to the who deal with smaller volumes don’t customer even after the foodstuff has have to pay taxes or get permits. That been ‘bulk-broken’. Rice that follows means smaller traders have become shorter value chains is obviously important maize importers, who cheaper. make regular cross-border trips and Shorter value-chains in this con- supply the wholesalers. Rice imports, text result in lower food prices, which on the other hand, aren’t as tightly have the potential to reduce food regulated because the state doesn’t poverty in the area. l see it as an important staple. This policy approach has allowed “different actors… to assert disproportionate power along the value chain, resulting in price volatility and product instability”. Paper cuts

Cumbersome red tape at a country’s borders, or restrictive importation taxes, can ripple through the food system and ultimately impact the price of food on the city’s streets.

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tion chain,” Siyanga-Tembo explains. “A trader floats the idea that the Zambian state should from Kitwe, for instance, might catch a public throttle back fish imports into the country as a bus north to Mpulungu on the shores of Lake way of protecting domestic fishing and aquac- Tanganyika. It’s about a 1 000-kilometre trip. Or ulture and the jobs these industries could boost. she might travel to Bangweulu in Samfya, about “Why is Zambia importing 40 000 tons of 300 kilometres away. She’ll spend a few days in fish per year when there’s so much potential for town, buying two or three 90-kilogram bags of local supply?” the writer asks.100 A protectionist preserved fish, and then travel back home to trade policy like this might be a shot in the arm Kitwe.” for the local fishing industry, and encourage Mix and match She’ll have to pay the shipping costs of the investment in the production side of the value stock on the return trip, but it still ends up being chain. But, as Siyanga-Tembo’s value chain Street traders typically cheaper than if there were several other agents mapping exercise shows, it might come at the sell a range of fresh and handling the fish along the way, where each adds cost of the urban poor. Scarcity pushes up the packaged foods, which a small markup. price of all kinds of fish, from all sources, which increases customers’ “What some traders in Kitwe might do, if narrows the food choice for the poor. “Lower- options. they have family up in Mpulungu, is ask a fam- income households will lose out because they ily member to buy the stock for them and put it won’t be able to buy the imported fish from on one of the buses coming down to Kitwe. Then China, in this case.” they’re just paying for the transport costs.” Then there’s the question of national trade From the customer’s perspective, she doesn’t policy, which can have a direct bearing on the care if the stock came from Lake Tanganyika or cost of fish in open-air markets in Zambia, such a port in China. She’s not concerned if she’s sup- as the Chisokone Market: trade arrangements porting local markets or not. Her main concern with the Democratic Republic of Congo allow is whether she can afford to buy the fish and feed this neighbouring country to buy up some of her family that night. Zambia’s freshwater fish catch. This might bring This brings us back to the question of what foreign exchange into the national coffers, but the take-home message is for policymakers, not will reduce the volume of fish available in the just in terms of local governments planning for domestic market and push up the price of this their cities to be more food secure, but also for key source of protein on the streets of Kitwe. national governments who are negotiating the Each one of the supply chain studies – for country’s trade policies. maize meal, fish, vegetables, porridge and eggs – across the three cities, shows that the dynamics unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa’s cities are the It’s not a ‘zero sum’ game result of food systems that span many different In the world of economics, a ‘zero sum’ game is scales, be they local, regional, or global. They one where you are either the winner or the loser, show how each of these is, in turn, shaped by there’s no shared good outcome for both teams. trade policies and market forces that are often The winner takes all and the loser goes home outside the jurisdiction of the city manager. And empty-handed. they show the interconnected relationship be- After mapping the fish value chains feeding tween informal and formal markets as the final into Kitwe’s markets, Siyanga-Tembo says the distribution nodes for the stock that flows along take-home message for governments is that, those trade routes. when it comes to creating trade policies for food “If you’re a policymaker, you can’t insist on imports, the state mustn’t treat it as a zero sum protecting just one of those systems. It’s com- game where one market is protected at the cost plex, and the global food system is also meeting of another. local needs. You have to look after all the various An opinion piece in the Lusaka Times in 2017 food systems.”

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Ugandan egg sales benefit from domestic grain subsidies

A single poultry farm in Kibos on the waterway transportation systems outskirts of Kisumu supplies most of have failed in recent years, pushing all the eggs to supermarkets and eateries freight onto roads, which are now also in this Kenyan city, according to the badly degraded, adding significantly CUP supply chain mapping exercise. to food transportation costs. This farm can’t meet the city’s Since regional arterial roads are total demand, so eggs are shipped in better maintained, eggs such as those from Nakuru and Naivasha towns in imported from Uganda along the Nakuru County, about 180 kilometres national highways will have a lower east of here, and also from neighbour- transport cost per kilometre than ing Uganda. those shipped in from local sources The Ugandan imported eggs, along the degraded rural roads.100 though, are cheaper on the streets of This basic road maintenance issue Kisumu than the locally farmed eggs. ultimately results in a boost for cross- This, according to the researchers, border trade, while prejudicing local is because the Ugandan government egg suppliers. subsidises animal feeds. Many of Kisumu’s shop owners say Another factor is Kisumu’s failing that the second biggest cost to their provincial road infrastructure in and businesses, after buying stock, is the around the city. The region’s rail and cost of transport. l

Potholes in the road

Poor road infrastructure around Kisumu has pushed up the transport costs of locally farmed eggs, favouring subsidised Ugandan imports. Transportation costs impact heavily on food prices in this city.

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W hite Elephant

Once all the market forces that shape the city’s food system have been accounted for, and the different players have had their say, one big question remains: where is local government in terms of decision-making, planning, and crafting policies so that the people living in our cities are not just free from hunger, but properly nourished, too? This is where the big gap still lies: strong local governance.

Big and ‘bling’

City managers often see shopping malls, such as the Lake Basin Mall outside Kisumu, as the rational upgrade to scruffy informal markets. City planners often allow mall development without understanding what customers need from retail.

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If you travel north on the Kakamega Highway ernment agency. Later in the year, the Kenyan for about six kilometres from Kisumu’s central parliament approved a national government business district, with the city to your back, bail-out by Treasury to settle the agency’s you’ll come across a tangle of half-built offramps outstanding KSh2.5 billion debt owed on the along the way. Once this highway upgrade is fin- property.105 Ghost mall ished, it will be the gateway to the biggest shop- The complex has had plenty of political sup- ping complex in western Kenya. If you believe port, which might explain the central govern- The Lake Basin Mall the media hype, the Lake Basin Mall will ‘revo- ment’s justification of the bail-out: when the outside Kisumu had a lutionise’ the shopping experience for this fast- Lake Basin Mall finally opens, it will be a “land- rocky start. By early developing area. mark national asset which will improve the 2018, two-thirds of A local real-estate ad crows about the mall’s economy of the Lake Basin region in line with its shops were still modern finishes and “futuristic sail-like curv- (Kenya’s) vision 2030”, the country’s Auditor unoccupied several ing roof”, the five-storey three-star hotel, the General Edward Ouko said.106 months after the 62 000 square metres of retail space, and the Yet by March 2018, even though newspaper complex opened for expansive undercover parking.102 Once you reports said the mall complex was finally open business. Malls like this look past that, you’ll see that the place has been for business,107 only about a third of the floor are seen as exemplifying standing largely empty since its last fittings space was booked at the time,108 there was little positive progress for were added in August 2016. trading, and no sign of a new anchor tenant. African cities. By the time the mall was finally finished, the From the perspective of the urban geogra- cost for the development had run to nearly dou- phers who are concerned about questions of ble its original estimate, topping out at KSh4.2 governance in the interests of hunger-proofing a billion103 (Kenyan shillings) and by early this city, this mall’s history is important. It pulls into year its anchor tenant, the Kenyan supermarket focus the fact that the decisions which shape chain Tuskys, had pulled out. There are reports the layout and structure of a city fundamentally that they had found premises in the centre of inform the food system, but they are often made town, according to local sustainable urban de- without giving much consideration to how they velopment and food security researcher Paul impact on the food system of a city. Opiyo, who is also part of the CUP research The Lake Basin Mall has been on the drawing team. board since the 1980s, but an attempted coup The mall has received plenty of media atten- against the Daniel arap Moi regime in 1982, fol- tion over the years. Breathless television jour- lowed by years of political instability, stalled the nalists escorted their news crews through the sod-turning, which finally happened in 2013. Af- echoing food court early in 2017,104 reporting ter that came the cost over-runs, the delays, the that the mall had been spared a hasty auction to unpaid debt, the parliamentary oversight, and settle the debt owed by the developer, the Lake the national government bail-out. Basin Development Authority (LBDA), a gov- The development has always been politi- cally motivated, explains Opiyo. This wasn’t a private-sector development, but was the idea of the LBDA that, until recently, was housed in the If you believe the media hype, Kenyan national government’s Ministry of Wa- ter, Environment and Natural Resources. Now the Lake Basin Mall will it’s in the Ministry of Devolution and Planning. “The LBDA is a semi-autonomous govern- ‘revolutionise’ the shopping ment agency that dates back to 1979 and deals with community development, agriculture, food experience for this fast- security, and water resources,” explains Opiyo. developing area “The agency conceived the idea of the mall

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Great expectations written by Percy Toriro

Most planners in Zimbabwe want hoods, or anything they see as rural or employment. They need to embrace their cities to be ‘world class’ – even backward. They advocate a rational, the fact that an ideal city is context places like Epworth, outside the capi- scientific planning approach where specific; it need not look like Dubai tal Harare. This community is poorly they prepare blueprints. Their day-to- or Hong Kong. As long as it works, as planned and undeveloped, but the day preoccupation, thereafter, is about long as it meets minimum require- settlement now has nearly 170 000 ensuring that the situation on the ments and local needs, and reflects residents in all. The city administra- ground matches that blueprint. Any- different stakeholder aspirations, that tors responsible for managing it have thing outside this ideal of what a city should make it a good city. l a low revenue base and the bureauc- should be is therefore seen as illegal racy is under-staffed. and must be dealt with ruthlessly, be it Percy Toriro is an urban planner based After speaking with city planners through demolishing informal traders’ at the University of Cape Town and was from Harare and from the central structures or closing businesses. part of CUP’s Epworth research team. government agency that oversees Epworth’s reality doesn’t match Epworth, it was clear that there’s a city planners’ perception of the place. disconnect between how they per- In fact, it embarrasses them; they opposite page: ceive the settlement, and the reality wish it could be better and different. Plan for the cities you have on the ground. Policymakers need to accept the The better urban food To most city officials, their vision reality of the people’s day-to-day system is not one that of a ‘modern’ city is one where there is struggles as they try to pursue differ- is exclusively formal. no informality, be it housing, liveli- ent livelihoods and create their own Allowing informal traders to operate close to formal food stores gives customers more diversity when it comes to food options and prices. This makes a community more food resilient.

left: Embracing the ‘undesirables’ ‘Informality’ is here to stay, argues Toriro. Instead of viewing this as ‘illegal’ or ‘undesirable’, city managers should view a ‘good city’ as one that meets people’s requirements and local needs.

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because it needed a place for its headquarters, and argued that if it built a shopping mall and Local government needs to be put its offices there, the agency could earn revenue from the mall and pay for itself rather than much more actively engaged in lean on central government for grant funding.” Its location, out here on the edge of the Kis- planning for and designing cities umu-Kakamega Highway, is probably to do with the fact that this is where much of Kisumu’s with the food system in mind middle-class suburban expansion is likely to happen, with wealthier neighbourhoods spring- ing up on the hills surrounding the congested city centre. Kisumu took root on the banks of Alison Pulker is a research assistant at the Lake Victoria, and its southern boundary is the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for water’s edge. The city can only expand north, Cities where the CUP project is based. Like west, and to the east. Battersby, she’s also concerned with how “There are many residential estates coming municipality-level decision-making impacts on up in this neighbourhood outside of Kisumu,” whether poorer communities in our cities expe- says Opiyo. “High-income people are moving rience a food gap or not. out of town and into this area.” “In terms of the relationship between the urban poor and the different food systems in the city context, we know that informal food City officials love the mall traders are an important safety net for people,” Some of the stories in this book already illus- Pulker explains. “We know that supermarket trate the kind of preferential treatment that expansion, including into low-income commu- shopping malls and supermarkets get, because nities, shapes how people access food, in terms they’re seen as clean, modern and aspirational. of affordability. We also know that supermarket Double vision They clearly have a special place in the hearts of and mall developments can sometimes push in- local government. formal traders out of key trading areas. But do Developers and officials “We can see from our work in Kisumu and our cities’ land-use and spatial planners under- seem to want to Kitwe that local governments see shopping malls, stand this?” modernise the city one and the supermarkets that occupy them, as sym- And so, in 2016, Pulker decided to speak with large retailer at a time, bols of modernisation and economic opportuni- land-use and spatial planners in the Cape Town apparently without ty,” says CUP researcher, Dr Jane Battersby. municipality, to gauge their understanding of being aware of the wider Four key ideas spur on the development of the link between the spread of supermarkets realities. these malls and supermarkets, Battersby says: and the food needs of the urban poor, and to test “the vision of the ‘modern’ city; the imperative their attitudes towards mall development in the of economic growth; the notion of the rising context of city layout and planning.110 middle class as the investment frontier (ex- “According to the planners we interviewed, plaining why so many complexes are built closer the rapid expansion of these kinds of develop- to middle-class suburbs); and the belief in pub- ments into low-income areas is aligned with lic-private partnerships as the means to achieve the city’s current political landscape,” she says. development objectives”.109 “They see it as a question of ‘all development is Because of this, Battersby says local govern- good development’.” ments need to be scrutinised more closely so How should these city-level officials shift they can be held accountable in terms of how gear so that they can make sure their current they view these developments, what they ap- development focus doesn’t put the city’s poorer prove and where. communities on shaky nutritional ground?

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Margie’s Kitchen, Cape Town by Robyn Park-Ross

“If you buy [at Margie’s Kitchen], then While her South African identity it’s like being at home. She cater (sic) is a protection for her, other foreign for people that wants cooked food and national traders doing business in her cater (sic) for people who wants like neighbourhood often find their trad- chips and chicken and fast food. You ing constricted by the prejudice they can have breakfast, lunch and supper face, both from other traders, as well at Aunty Margie’s kitchen.” (Custom- as by trading regulations. er, 15 September 2017)111 Traders are quick to find solu- Margaret Fredericks has been trad- tions to these problems, though. ing around Bellville station, near Cape Margie stores her stock at home Town, South Africa, for 24 years. She to reduce the possibility of theft in operates out of a 4x4m municipal the face of high crime levels. She kiosk, which allows her to make a liv- also employs someone who used to ing, helps pay towards her daughters’ live on the street in the area to take education, and employs four women. care of cleaning around her kiosk Traders like Margie bring a host of in response to the lack of municipal food options to city folk, particularly cleaning. Margie has also been a those whose daily commutes keep central part of the African Traders them out of home for long periods. Association, which has struggled to But businesswomen like Margie influence city governance relating to Kiosk life face challenges, ranging from sys- their businesses. Self-organising can Margaret Fredericks temic ones, to issues that are specific be time-consuming on top of already has been selling her to where they trade. Systemic issues long business hours, and disillusion- wares from a municipal are linked to elements of identity, ing when she feels the work is having kiosk at Bellville Station such as gender, race, or nationality. limited impact. near Cape Town for a For instance, being a female trader There’s little recognition of the im- quarter of a century. means that she often has to limit her portant role these traders like Margie Her story shows how operating hours due to family respon- play in boosting people’s access to factors such as gender sibilities, or she may be vulnerable to food, and so there’s little support for and nationality impact harassment and discrimination. them. l on whether or not small, independent operators thrive in the food Robyn Park-Ross is an urban planning system. researcher with the African Centre for Cities, the institutional home of the CUP project.

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“Well, at an institutional level, this means crafting policy that reflects an understanding that where you locate supermarkets will ultimately shape how informal traders operate,” Pulker explains. Cape Town’s food-security policy empha- sises urban farming as something of a panacea to address the food gap, without considering the impact of mall development on whether or not informal markets are allowed to operate effectively or thrive, she says. “Yes, urban agriculture does play a role, but on its own it’s not enough to address the systemic nature of food insecurity.” Well-informed land-use and spatial planning North meets south can help create a city that has an affordable and equitable urban food system, Pulker says, be- Traditional tastes meet cause planners can decide where to allow super- modern industrial food markets and malls to be built. processes on this street Planners can also influence the kinds of regu- corner in downtown lations that apply to specific sites. This means de- Kisumu. High-end ciding on whether or not to allow informal food billboard advertising trading to happen close to a mall, and stipulating and two-minute noodles how much of that land should be earmarked for typify how ‘Big Food’ is informal food trading, or whether food markets moving in on the new are close to public transport routes. market opportunities Returning to the Kisumu story, it’s not clear they see in African how much the local government there was in- cities. volved in decision-making and planning around the location of the Lake Basin Mall development. Although it’s hardly surprising that the complex sprang up close to land earmarked for a middle-class development, because where the richer suburbs go, supermarkets and malls tend to follow.

The local government ‘gap’ From the vantage point of a city administrator, there’s no quick or easy route to understanding their role in shaping the urban food system. But if they want to design a city that is not only free from hunger, but properly nourished in the long-term too, they need to understand who all the players are in the food system – governments themselves, the private sector, or civil society organisations – and what their competing interests are.112

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“The problem is that cities have never seen hubs in future, with a likely concentration of Working together food as their problem,” says Battersby, “and development challenges, but also with plenty of even if they did, local governments generally development opportunities. This reality is often Cities don’t have to have quite limited financial and human capac- missed in the planning of city systems. be an either-or choice ity. So, from what we’ve seen in Kitwe, Kisumu From Opiyo’s perspective, the Kisumu- of formal or informal and Epworth, there’s little direct governance Kakamega Highway that passes by the Lake development. A blend focus on food.” Basin Mall may be the answer to the complex’s of the two – including Local governments don’t seem to be think- woes, but may also be contributing to them. The in the food system – ing about how their decisions relating to trader tangle of half-completed overpasses and under- can allow for a more conditions, market sites and mall developments passes along this stretch of road have been part agile and resilient shape how food flows in the city, how much it of a dual-lane upgrade that’s been ongoing for community. costs, and whether people can access it. over three years now. “This means that most policy and planning “The place is dusty, and getting into the mall decisions are informed by national govern- is challenging,” he says, after a visit to the site ments, large international donor agencies and in June 2018, when there was still a gaping hole private-sector actors,” Battersby explains. in the space where the anchor tenant was sup- Local government needs to be much more posed to be, and no rumour of a replacement. actively engaged in planning for and designing “This may be one of the reasons why retail- cities with the food system in mind. These sec- ers are reluctant to commit to opening up shops ondary cities may have a ‘vulnerable economic here – that they’ll be renting space but that cus- base’, but will nevertheless be development tomers might not come soon.”

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7 Myth Busting for a Better Food System

There are many ideas that try to explain how African cities feed themselves. Some of these theories may no longer hold true. In this final chapter, we look at what the evidence on the ground tells us about the food gap in cities, and gives some suggestions for how to plan for well-fed, well-nourished communities.

Complex city life

Local governments often regard the question of food security as being the responsibility of the national departments of agriculture or health. But how well a city’s transport, electricity, housing, and water infrastructure works is key to its food resilience.

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Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United As long as farmers are coaxing Nations as the solution to the food and nutrition gap in cities that leave many hungry, heavy, and enough yields from their soil, sick. But while locally grown or supplied food is part of the multi-pronged response, it shouldn’t the belief goes, the markets and be seen as a silver bullet. “Being able to work on the ground as we did supermarket shelves will be full through the course of this project, we’re now and people will be fed able to show that the reality in these African cities doesn’t necessarily correspond with what’s seen as the norm, or even aspired to as the ideal,” says CUP researcher Dr Jane Battersby. “These secondary cities are far more globally connected If you were to wander down to the water’s edge than the theory suggests, and these global con- in the Kenyan city of Kisumu – say, Lwang’ni nections aren’t limited to modern, formal sup- Beach, just off Marine Drive, or the pier at the ply chains. Informal trading is central to how immigration port a little further south – you’d be this whole system works, and by no means only forgiven for thinking that the fish being served local. The structure of the food system is shaped from any of the take-away kiosks along the way by complex and interconnected factors beyond had been pulled directly from the waters of this municipal, provincial, or even national govern- little gulf on the northeastern shoulder of Lake ment competence.” Victoria. The reality is that this part of the great lake is choking under a blanket of the alien weed, water It’s not only about producing hyacinth, and the once abundant waters are so more food badly polluted by wastewater flushing out of the drainage systems of the fast-growing but under- Many city administrators can be forgiven for serviced city, that fish stocks here are collapsing. thinking that matters relating to food security The freshwater fish being bought and eaten don’t fit into their job description or jurisdic- in Kisumu mostly comes from much further tion. right bottom afield, sometimes from across the lake at fisher- For decades, the question of food security has Right tools for the Fast-food nation men’s haul-out points in Uganda, or as far away been viewed as a problem of rural poverty, or job as a Chinese export harbour. agricultural production. For city planners or bu- ‘Time poverty’ means There are many theories and assumptions reaucrats, this means the problem is far outside ‘Asset poverty’ – such many people can’t spend that try to explain how the urban food system their domain, and sits in whatever department as not having working slow hours shopping works in Africa. Some of them may not hold true takes care of agriculture or rural development. kitchen appliances or for and preparing any longer, or may call for a more nuanced un- As long as farmers are coaxing enough yields refrigeration at home wholesome meals for derstanding, and the evidence emerging from from their soil, the belief goes, the markets and – is a key reason why their families. Take- this project helps clarify some of these in the supermarket shelves will be full and people will people choose the foods away foods are a quick, context of a city in the Global South. be fed. If we simply produce more food and make they do, which has a host simple way to solve the One of those ideas is what theorists call the it cheaper, we’ll fill the food gap. How does this of health implications. problem for hungry City Region Food Systems paradigm – the idea production-bias express itself at the level of a people who are on the that smaller African cities feed themselves city’s food policy? We think, then, that if people run in a busy city. from locally sourced foods, and that a return to are hungry in our cities, we should encourage ‘the local’ in terms of food supply is something them to grow their own food. The result: policies we should encourage. This ‘model’ is often put and programmes that support urban agriculture forward by organisations such as the Food and projects.

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works when these gardens provide wage-earn- Being food secure isn’t just about ing jobs for the farmers, so they have money not just to buy food, but also for school fees, phone being free from hunger, it’s about airtime, electricity, and so on. When a poor family has to stretch a minute budget across so having a diet that’s wholesome and many competing needs, wholesome, expensive food is often the first to get bumped off the list. nutritious. Carrying extra weight People will fill themselves up on refined, filling is often the fallout of exposure to staple foods such as bread or porridge, which don’t have much nutrient goodness, but at least foods, over a long period of time, stop hunger pangs in the moment. Busting this myth – the notion that food secu- which are packed with energy but rity is only about making sure there are enough calories in circulation in the city – allows local have little nutritional goodness governments to grapple with the much more complex solutions to creating food-secure cities. It’s not enough just to have food coming into the Food gardens are, without question, one city: it needs to be the right kind of wholesome, small part of the bigger solution, Battersby and nutritious and culturally appropriate food; it her team argue. These can be an important con- must be affordable; it must be available close to tribution to help trickle-feed affordable, fresh a person’s home so they can carry it if they can’t produce into local city markets. But they’re not afford transport; and they must have cash so they going to address the wider range of reasons that can buy the food, either through having a wage- cities’ food systems fail to fill the food gap. paying job, or a social grant, or some kind of busi- Previous work by the African Centre for Cit- ness that earns them a livelihood. If all else fails, ies (ACC) has already shown why some urban they need to lean on some kind of community food garden schemes fail. Things like a person’s network that will lend or give them food when precarious and unpredictable income, a general they have no other way to get it. lack of time to get their hands in the soil, the fact “Urban agriculture can help, but the much that they often don’t have secure tenure over more important story here is the question of their land, and risky environmental conditions municipal services and infrastructure when it Personal choice? such as poor soil or unreliable water supply, all comes to supporting a functional city-wide food make food farming in a city risky. For someone system,” says Battersby. Viewing obesity as a living on the breadline, investing time, labour, She elaborates, “Local governments have to personal and private or resources in growing fresh produce in their roll out infrastructure fairly across the entire lifestyle choice can leave back yard, or a nearby communal area, is way city. Households and retailers need access to policy responses blind too risky. water, sanitation, cooking energy, temperature- to the systemic reasons For the poorest of the poor, if someone has stable storage, and so forth, if they are to be food behind why cities’ food three hours of labour to trade on any given day, and nutritionally secure. This is often over- systems leave many they need to give that labour in exchange for looked, but it’s critical that municipalities de- hungry, heavy, and sick. cash, so they can buy food for the family today. liver on this front.” They often can’t risk investing that labour in the promise of spinach leaves that might be ready to eat six weeks from now.113 Some better-off Heavy but still hungry households in lower-income neighbourhoods Rising obesity in our cities can also confuse do tend to grow their own food when they can. matters: at one level, being fuller-figured in But for the poorest families, urban agriculture this part of the world is something we can re-

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late to because it signals to the world that our Headline 1: poverty at a household level is family is well-off and that we’re not sick, and it multifaceted and complex. For a city family, this makes us feel that we fit in and are part of the is measured in how much time they may have, community. or whether they have transport, or basic house- But at the same time, carrying extra weight hold assets. It’s tallied in whether they have ba- can be misleading because it makes it look as sic infrastructure and services in their homes though we’ve got ample food in our lives and are and neighbourhoods, such as running water or therefore food secure. electricity, or whether there’s enough cash to Being food secure isn’t just about being free meet all their monthly expenses. It shows in from hunger, it’s about having a diet that is their budget choices and ultimately what food wholesome and nutritious in the long term. Car- they choose to eat, even if it’s not healthy food. rying extra weight is often the fallout of expo- That’s why this book isn’t about food, per se; sure to foods over a long period of time that are but rather about how poverty expresses itself packed with energy, but have little nutritional through people’s food choices and health. goodness. That’s why obesity is often called the ‘hidden hunger’, because a person looks well Headline 2: the city is shot through with an fed, but is actually malnourished. The cost of intricate network of informal and formal food the associated diseases is enormous, to the per- systems, from processing, packaging and ship- son with the illnesses and their families, as well ping, through to myriad forms of retailing, be as to the state. it prepared restaurant food, groceries, roadside Another part of this story is the notion that take-away vendors or drive-through fast-food a person’s diet and health are a personal mat- joints. The most visible in the system are those ter, unfolding in the privacy of their homes, and in the formal food economy. Supermarkets and the result of their own choices and desires. The malls, with their gleaming, contemporary fin- thinking goes that it’s therefore up to the individ- ishes and aspirational brand names, are seen ual to educate themselves about health issues, as the poster children of the modern African and make the right food and lifestyle choices if city, and city administrations often give them they wish to be healthy, fit and lean. The upshot special favour, in terms of planning or service of seeing hunger and malnutrition as something provision. that happens in the privacy of people’s homes But the informal food economy is more im- is a set of policies that are geared towards the portant for poorer communities, in terms of household and the individual, such as handing bringing food to their neighbourhoods, or giv- out food aid or encouraging food gardens. ing jobs that allow people to make a living and Poverty is multi-layered Busting these myths – that carrying some buy that food. From the perspective of the urban extra weight signals an abundant diet; and that poor, these two economies are symbiotic, and Household poverty is measured being obese is a personal choice – allows local cities should nurture both. Local government in more than just a shortage government to realise that these health-related needs to be more deliberate about including of cash. It’s also measured in questions aren’t just the responsibility of the informal food operators (processors, transport- whether a family has time, access individual, or that responses to it should be left ers, and retailers) in the fibre of the city’s econo- to transport, running water or with the state’s healthcare sector. my, and giving them the space they need to oper- electricity, or even basic kitchen ate, as well as the municipal services they need appliances at home. All these so they can operate cleanly and effectively. things shape people’s day-to-day Three ‘headlines’ food choices. After three years of studying these smaller cit- Headline 3: today’s cities are not discrete ies in sub-Saharan Africa, the CUP research- islands, supporting themselves by drawing food, ers have drawn three key ‘headlines’ from their water, energy, skills, or labour from their im- time in the communities they visited. mediate surrounds. The supermarket shelves,

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fed and well nourished calls for local govern- For someone living on the ments who are attuned to the complexities of the food system, the layout of the city, and the breadline, investing time, labour, multifaceted nature of urban poverty. There’s no silver-bullet solution to fixing or resources in growing fresh the food and nutrition gap in this urban context. The food system is an “interconnected produce in their back yard, or a web of activities, resources, and people that nearby communal area, is way extends across all domains involved in providing human nourishment and sustaining health, too risky including production, processing, packaging, distribution, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food”, as Lisa Chase and Vern Grubin- open-air markets and roadside food traders’ ger describe it in Food, Farms and Community: stalls in today’s African cities are stocked up Exploring Food Systems.114 If city administra- with produce that is shipped in from trade tors and planners and policymakers can see it routes that may start just a few kilometres away, that way, and understand the complexity of it or tap into regional networks, or are global in within their own cities, they can look for points scale. Each one of these different trade routes of leverage within that system, and tailor solu- helps make a city more resilient against the tions that are best suited to that situation and kinds of shocks that might lead to local-level context, such as finding employment and liveli- hunger or famine. hood solutions, nurturing the different strands Realistic city policies and planning will take of the informal economy, or curbing the influ- this into consideration, and understand that eco- ence of Big Food. nomic forces, trade policies and many other fac- The starting point to being deliberate about tors that are at play outside the city’s immediate creating cities that are sustainable and properly jurisdiction, nevertheless have an impact on the nourished, is to understand what’s really hap- kinds of food available in the city, and its final pening on the ground. And the stories emerging price tag. Governments need to plan their food from this three-year research project help show systems by thinking across these different scales, some of the complex and often unseen forces and integrate this with spatial planning in mind. at play, which ultimately shape what we eat in the city, and why, and how much that costs us in Parting shots money and health. Consider just how much of our day pivots around moments that involve food: where we’re The roadrunner ‘Marathon’ chicken sitting down to a main meal with some friends; The closing story for this book unfolds amongst or buying a piece of barbecued chicken with pap a group of people at a taxi rank somewhere in This photograph of from a roadside trader while we dash to work; downtown Kitwe, where a queuing woman the live chicken, taken planning our child’s school lunch; or picking up waits patiently with her fellow commuters, an at this taxi rank in a few groceries for the weekend? amaCheckers hanging from one hand. An ama- Kitwe, Zambia, tells Food is at the heart of our day, it’s central to Checkers is a South African word for plastic an important story of our lives, and it’s the bedrock of our health and grocery bags of the sort sold by any supermar- how its owner is using wellbeing. Food is also an architect of the very ket, not just those with the Shoprite-Checkers two food systems – the city we live in: it shapes how the city is laid out, branding. This particular bag has been torn formal and the informal how the urban economy works, and how we en- neatly from gullet to gusset to allow the head of – to meet her family’s gage with the city and each other. a live chicken to peek out and get some air. The food needs. Creating cities that allow people to be well chicken looks unfazed, her white neck feathers

144 145 myth busting TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

splayed around the opening that’s been made for might call ‘traditional’ chicken. We saw chicken her comfort; her rubbery comb, red as a fire en- referred to like this on some of the restaurant gine, fans above her beak as she seems to watch menus in the university canteens we visited in the passers-by. Kenya and Tanzania, for instance,” says Batters- “What strikes me about this scene is what it by. “They’re also called ‘roadrunners’ or ‘mara- says about how people choose to interact with thon chickens’. They tend to be a bit leaner and the two different food systems in their cities,” tougher, and many people say they prefer them says Battersby. to the overly soft chickens that are bred for su- “This is a woman who is clearly using the supermarkets.” permarket sector for some of her grocery shop- The woman who’s carrying her roadrunner ping. But she still prefers to buy a live chicken, home in the amaCheckers may still have to do which is a significant financial outlay, over a the grim work of slaughtering, plucking, and chicken from Shoprite that’s already dead, and cleaning the bird. And she may well have paid has been plucked and refrigerated.” more for it than if she’d bought the prepared Earlier in the book, we spoke about the four meat in the nearby shop. But she’ll get around pillars that most people use to define the notion the problems of having to store the perishable of ‘food security’: food should be available, ac- meat at home. She’ll get to use the whole chick- cessible, usable, and there should be a reliable en – intestines, gizzard, head, feet, carcass – and and stable supply of it. But we threw in a fifth she’ll get a taste and texture from the meat that possible pillar, that of ‘agency’: when a person she’s more familiar with. has some level of control over her life, when she “For me, this story says so much about how a has the ability to make her own choices over her woman like this is choosing. It says something budget and the food she buys and uses, this also about the local and the global dynamics of the determines if she’s food secure or not. food system at work here in the city. It talks The story of the live chicken in the ama- about the interplay between the formal and in- Checkers says something about the choices this formal food systems. It speaks to the way that woman is making in terms of how she uses the people make choices in the food system. And it different food systems around her. reminds me of why our cities benefit from hav- “Many people around Africa prefer what they ing a diverse food system.”

Mix and match

Whether people are buying their groceries from informal road-side food traders (left), or formal stores (right), our cities benefit from a more diverse food system.

146 147 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS

148 149 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS References

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See also: Goris, JM., Petersen, S., https://www.lusakatimes.com/2016/11/28/ riosis – South Africa. Available: http://www. to Increase Due to Avian Influenza. Available: Available: https://www.businessdailyafrica. 112 Battersby, J. & Watson, V. (2019). Stamatakis, E. & Veerman, JL. (2010). Televi- chisokonemarket-not-ideal-conducting-busi- who.int/csr/don/02-may-2018-listeriosis- http://www.agriexchange.apeda.gov.in/Mar- com/news/counties/Western-Kenya-s-larg- sion Food Advertising and the Prevalence ness-kitwemayor/. Downloaded: 14 May 2018. south-africa/en/. Downloaded: 16 May 2018. ketReport/Reports/Poultry_and_Products_ est-shopping-mall-opens-doors/4003142- 113 Joubert, L. (2012). The Hungry Season: of Childhood Overweight and Obesity: A Feeding Southern Africa’s Cities. Johannes- 59 Mwitwa, P. (5 January 2018). Kitwe 70 Kahn, T. (28 March 2018). Listeriosis Annual_Pretoria_South_Africa_Republic%20 4344662-76v27v/index.html. Downloaded: Multicountry Comparison. Public Health Council Bans Sale of Fresh Foods in Wake of of_10-20-2017.pdf. Downloaded: 27 July 2018. 14 June 2018. burg: Picador Africa. Nutrition. 13(7): 1003-12. Outbreak Could Hit Broader Economy. Sun- Cholera Crisis. Zambia Reports. Available: day Times. Available: https://www.timeslive. 90 Siyanga-Tembo, F. (2017). From Fork to 104 NTV Kenya. (6 January 2017). Kisumu’s 114 Chase, L. & Grubinger, V. (2014). https://zambiareports.com/2018/01/05/

152 153 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS About the author and photographers

Leonie Joubert Samantha Reinders Masixole Feni

Science writer Leonie Joubert is an Samantha Reinders is a photojournal- Masixole Feni is a freelance photojour- award-winning author who uses dif- ist based between South Africa and nalist. He has worked for various news ferent ways of storytelling to grapple Nepal. She holds a graduate degree in media such as Paris Courier, Big Issue with the tough issues of today as we try visual communications from Ohio Uni- magazine, GroundUp and Independent to find ways to live together on a tightly versity. She believes strongly in telling Newspapers in Cape Town. He shoots packed planet: climate and environ- people’s stories as personally as she can projects of relevant social issues in mental change, energy policy, cities and with as much empathy as possible. the townships and has, over time, built as development hubs, and why today’s She has been trusted by various edi- an impressive body of work. Masixole food system leaves many of us hungry, torial and NGO clients, including: the started his career as a photographer in heavy, and sick. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The his early teens when he joined Jenny Leonie was the 2007 Ruth First Fel- New York Times, National Geographic, Altschuler’s Drumming Photography low; was listed in the Mail & Guardian’s Action Aid, the United Nations Devel- Workshop at the Iziko SA Museum in 200 Young South Africans You Must opment Programme, Vanity Fair, the 1999. Between 2011 and 2012 he was Take to Lunch (2008); was twice given Financial Times, and more. Samantha formally accepted on the South African an honorary mention in the Sunday loves her job. Centre for Photography’s mentorship Times Alan Paton Nonfiction Awards programme. He soon began working (2007 and 2010); was named the 2009 for newspapers and NGOs, winning a SAB Environmental Journalist of the number of awards along the way. Year (print/internet category); and was shortlisted for the 2016 City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award.

154 155 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS Acknowledgements

The Consuming Urban Poverty project team to be and that everyone boarded their flights; would like to thank the following individu- and, most importantly, to Robyn Park-Ross, als and organisations without whom this book for holding the whole project together with would not have been possible: such grace. First and foremost, thanks to the production To our project partners in Kisumu, Kitwe, team. Writer Leonie Joubert for transforming a Epworth, and Cape Town (Nourishing Spaces set of academic pieces into amazingly rich text project) – without your data and insights there for a wider audience. Photographers Samantha would be no book. Thanks especially to Paul Reinders and Masixole Feni for their beautiful Opiyo, Fridah Siyanga-Tembo, Gift Mudozori, images showing the sometimes lovely and some- and Jo Hunter Adams for their work with the times ugly facets of our cities and their food sys- photographers. tems in all their complexity. Proofreader Linda The contributing authors were: Paul Opiyo, Martindale and our copy editor for their atten- Percy Toriro, Fadzai Muramba, Robyn Bow- tion to detail. Graphic designer Lynne Stuart den, Robyn Park-Ross, Alison Pulker, Jo Hunt- for all her ideas, patience, and pulling together a er Adams and Fridah Siyanga-Tembo – thank product we are proud to stand behind. you for allowing us to use your stories. To the UCT team: Alma Viviers, for all her Finally, the support of the Economic and advice on layout and technical details; Marlene Social Research Council (UK) and the UK De- Joubert and Maryam Waglay, for making sure partment for International Development is that everyone was paid when they were meant gratefully acknowledged.

Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson, Cape Town, 2018

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Despite their apparent abundance of resources, our cities often leave the urban poor hungry, heavy, and sick. This book isn’t really about the food that most people eat in Africa’s cities, though. Rather, it’s about the many forces that shape the day-to-day choices that people make as they try to survive close to the breadline, and how that expresses itself through the food they eat.

Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks debunks some of the stubborn misconceptions about how cities keep themselves well fed and well nourished, and considers how to create a more sustainable and equitable urban food system, particularly for those struggling to make ends meet.

This book is written for anyone interested in creating sustainable, fair cities on our continent.

A product of the Consuming Urban Poverty Project. https://consumingurbanpoverty.wordpress.com

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