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This report forms part of the African Food Security Urban Network’s efforts to increase knowledge on urban food systems and household food insecurity in Africa’s cities. Focusing on food security in the municipality of Dschang in Cameroon, the report builds on studies of secondary cities in Malawi and Namibia. These studies confirm that household f...
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... About 40% of this population is estimated to live below the poverty line [21]. Although it is an ecologically rich country with enough resources to produce all the food needed to feed its growing population, food insecurity, malnutrition, and hunger are widespread in Cameroon's urban and rural areas [7,[22][23][24]. The food insecurity situation in Cameroon is partly due to a lack of proper attention given to agriculture and partly to external and internal conflicts affecting the country [7,25]. ...
Food insecurity remains a global threat despite advances made to mitigate its effect on human suffering. Numerous indicators have been developed, tested and validated to measure specific aspects of food security, which may likely present different results. This study uses Household Dietary Diversity Scores (HDDS) and Household Food Insecurity Scale (HFIAS) to compare food accessibility status between rural and informal urban dwellers in Buea municipality and Poisson regression to analyse the determinants of food insecurity among the two groups. The two food insecurity measures present different results. HFIAS shows about 97% food insecurity of the sampled population of Buea Municipality and a significant difference of p
... The household food security survey was followed by a survey of smallscale food-trading businesses (fewer than five employees) in Dschang in August 2019 (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. ...
... The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. The survey included 854 trading businesses representing a distribution of types of businesses in line with a rapid survey conducted as a framing exercise (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey was implemented in 21 locations across Dschang's urban area, with the largest share (25%) conducted at the main food market (Marché B), followed by the informal residential areas of Foreké (15%) and Foto (14%). ...
... About two-thirds of the respondents were women and one-third were men. The majority of businesses (73%) operated without paying any kind of licensing or market fee (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey included an open-ended question about what foods the businesses sold, in which each respondent named up to five foods that were the main items they sold and responded to a series of questions pertaining to each food. ...
Cameroon is rapidly becoming an urban society and much of the urban population growth is taking place in secondary cities. Dschang is one of these growing secondary cities. A former administrative centre and market hub for an agriculturally productive area, Dschang has expanded and diversified since the establishment of a national university in the 1990s. A household food security survey in 2017 found that two-thirds of households were severely food insecure, even amid high rates of participation in food production and livestock rearing and a robust informal food marketing system. This chapter documents the findings of the survey and outlines three important factors driving household food insecurity in Dschang: the limited power of the local government; the consequences of the political conflict in neighbouring Anglophone regions of Cameroon, and Dschang’s role as a supplier to the regional food system.
... The household food security survey was followed by a survey of smallscale food-trading businesses (fewer than five employees) in Dschang in August 2019 (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. ...
... The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. The survey included 854 trading businesses representing a distribution of types of businesses in line with a rapid survey conducted as a framing exercise (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey was implemented in 21 locations across Dschang's urban area, with the largest share (25%) conducted at the main food market (Marché B), followed by the informal residential areas of Foreké (15%) and Foto (14%). ...
... About two-thirds of the respondents were women and one-third were men. The majority of businesses (73%) operated without paying any kind of licensing or market fee (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey included an open-ended question about what foods the businesses sold, in which each respondent named up to five foods that were the main items they sold and responded to a series of questions pertaining to each food. ...
Countries across Africa are rapidly transitioning from rural to urban societies. The UN projects that 60% of people living in Africa will be in urban areas by 2050, with the urban population on the continent tripling over the next 50 years. The challenge of building inclusive and sustainable cities in the context of rapid urbanization is arguably the critical development issue of the twenty-first century and creating food secure cities is key to promoting health, prosperity, equity, and ecological sustainability. The expansion of Africa’s urban population is taking place largely in secondary cities. These are broadly defined as cities with fewer than half a million people that are not national political or economic centres. The implications of secondary urbanization have recently been described by the Cities Alliance as “a real knowledge gap,” requiring much additional research not least because it poses new intellectual challenges for academic researchers and governance challenges for policymakers. International researchers coming from multiple points of view, including food studies, urban studies, and sustainability studies, are starting to heed the call for further research into the implications for food security of rapidly growing secondary cities in Africa.
... The household food security survey was followed by a survey of smallscale food-trading businesses (fewer than five employees) in Dschang in August 2019 (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. ...
... The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. The survey included 854 trading businesses representing a distribution of types of businesses in line with a rapid survey conducted as a framing exercise (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey was implemented in 21 locations across Dschang's urban area, with the largest share (25%) conducted at the main food market (Marché B), followed by the informal residential areas of Foreké (15%) and Foto (14%). ...
... About two-thirds of the respondents were women and one-third were men. The majority of businesses (73%) operated without paying any kind of licensing or market fee (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey included an open-ended question about what foods the businesses sold, in which each respondent named up to five foods that were the main items they sold and responded to a series of questions pertaining to each food. ...
Foodborne diseases are a major public health problem in African cities. Residents of secondary cities are often more at risk due to relatively low capacity for municipalities to provide hygiene infrastructure and to enforce food safety regulations. This study aimed to explore underlying factors that are associated with hygienic practices among food traders in Mzuzu, Malawi and Dschang, Cameroon. A multistage cross-sectional study design was conducted to sample 497 food traders in Mzuzu and 848 traders in Dschang. A questionnaire was administered to obtain data related to food safety practices, knowledge and sociodemographic characteristics of participants. Problems revealed by the survey included a lack of the following: knowledge about food safety regulations; toilet and hand washing facilities; waste bins and health inspections. The study suggests poor compliance of food hygiene practices among food traders. It highlights the lack of adequate action by the municipal government in educating food traders and enforcing food safety regulations.
... The household food security survey was followed by a survey of smallscale food-trading businesses (fewer than five employees) in Dschang in August 2019 (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. ...
... The survey questions addressed issues about the location of vendors, demographic characteristics, enterprise characteristics (structure, practices and business environment), sanitation and food production patterns. The survey included 854 trading businesses representing a distribution of types of businesses in line with a rapid survey conducted as a framing exercise (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey was implemented in 21 locations across Dschang's urban area, with the largest share (25%) conducted at the main food market (Marché B), followed by the informal residential areas of Foreké (15%) and Foto (14%). ...
... About two-thirds of the respondents were women and one-third were men. The majority of businesses (73%) operated without paying any kind of licensing or market fee (Kamga et al., 2021). The survey included an open-ended question about what foods the businesses sold, in which each respondent named up to five foods that were the main items they sold and responded to a series of questions pertaining to each food. ...
Cameroon’s forests form an important component of forest block in the Congo Basin with about 20 million hectares containing over 8000 species of vascular plants of which about 150 are endemic. These forest resources are of significant economic value and many people earn their livelihood from the gathering and trading of food, fuel wood, fruits, leaves, medicinal products, and construction materials. Forest foods are vital to Cameroon’s food systems, including urban food systems, but they are threatened by the vulnerability of tropical forest ecosystem to climate change, a vulnerability exacerbated by recurrent past and the present problems related to poor natural resource management, conflict and inequality. Urban residents in Cameroon consume many forest foods and the trade in forest products creates employment for urban residents. This chapter draws together research conducted with forest communities, forest food traders and urban consumers to illustrate the importance of sustainable forest management for urban food security in Cameroon’s secondary cities.
... We found that both rural -urban and urban -urban food linkages were common across households in secondary Zambian urban areas, which mirrors the findings in Crush and Caesar's (2017) study of food linkages in larger cities in Zimbabwe and Namibia. Research in other secondary urban centers has found that rural food linkages to urban households ranged from 20% of households (in Mzuzu, Malawi) to 69.2% of households (in Dschang, Cameroon) (Riley and Chilanga 2018;Nickanor and Kazembe 2019;Legwegoh et al. 2020). Across all urban areas in our study, 27.5% of households sourced food from rural areas and 19% of households sourced food from other urban areas. ...
Urban populations globally are expected to increase by approximately 2.5 billion by 2050. Much of this growth is taking place in African cities, where about 40% of Africans live in urban areas with populations of less than 250,000. In many of these cities, rapid urban growth has outpaced economic and social development, resulting in high levels of urban poverty and widespread food insecurity. As one response strategy, urban households may leverage their linkages with rural areas and other towns or cities to supplement their food consumption, for example through food remittances or food purchases from remote retailers. While this strategy has been found to occur among inhabitants of large cities where existing research on urban food systems and urban food linkages with other areas has focused, the dynamics in smaller cities are likely different. In this paper, we draw on data from 837 surveys collected in 2021 to investigate household food sourcing strategies across 14 urban areas in Zambia with populations less than 100,000. We find that rural-urban food linkages are dominated by grains while urban-urban food linkages are predominantly composed of higher value foods. Our data further suggest that urban area characteristics explain more of the variability in food sourcing behaviors than household level characteristics, and that urban food purchasing preferences in secondary urban areas are sensitive to the food retail landscape available to households. These relationships highlight the disparate role that rural and urban linkages play across cities of different sizes. They suggest a need for food-related policies to consider diverse urban food systems among smaller cities.
... About 40% of this population is estimated to live below the poverty line [21]. Although it is an ecologically rich country with enough resources to produce all the food needed to feed its growing population, food insecurity, malnutrition, and hunger are widespread in Cameroon's urban and rural areas [7,[22][23][24]. The food insecurity situation in Cameroon is partly due to a lack of proper attention given to agriculture and partly to external and internal conflicts affecting the country [7,25]. ...
The early 1990s were a crucial turning point in Zimbabwe. Not only was the Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP) initiated in 1990, but the country was also hit with a major drought in 1991/92. We know that the urban poor were (and continue to be) disproportionately impacted by wage cuts, lay-offs and changes to food prices, especially since data from the period indicate that the poor spent a third to twice as much of their expenditures on food and health care than the non-poor. This chapter explores the food security situation of 100 lodgers (private renters) in the medium-sized city of Gweru, located halfway between Harare and Bulawayo. Based on data from diverse types of lodging across all density areas, it discusses the linkages between strength of rural ties, modes of livelihood, household composition, and fixed expenses such as rent and food security.
The cyclical alternation of drought, cyclones and floods threaten food security for households in rapidly growing coastal cities such as Xai-Xai, Mozambique. Inhabitants of Xai-Xai are highly dependent on urban subsistence agriculture and informal markets in order to guarantee food for their households. Both of these food security strategies have been affected by natural disasters in recent years making it difficult for households to access food. Recent research discussed in this chapter demonstrates that urban households are deprived of basic needs and live under permanent stress manifested by their inability to provide a pot of xima meal on household’s tables. The area around Xai-Xai used to be the granary of the southern Mozambique, but it is no longer able to guarantee that role. A common response among Xai-Xai residents to questions about urban food security is that food security is a concept for experts who do not understand their lived experiences. To them, food security associated with the whole household having enough xima . This chapter examines the concept of food security from the perspective of what really matters to households in the context of extreme events. The chapter integrates the lead author’s reflections on her community’s experiences with hunger and food security during her childhood with recent research on food security in Mozambique. The significance of this method in this instance is, as stated above, to uncover food security experiences that may well escape rigorous quantitative methods.
Informal vendors are a critical source of food security for urban residents in African cities. However, the livelihoods of these traders, and the governance constraints they encounter, are not well-understood outside of the region’s capital and primate cities. This study focuses on two distinct secondary cities in Nigeria, Calabar in the South-South geopolitical zone of the country and Minna in the Middle Belt region. Interviews were collected with local and state officials in each city on the legal, institutional, and oversight functions they provide within the informal food sector. This was complemented with a survey of approximately 1097 traders across the two cities to assess their demographic profile, contributions to food security, key challenges they face for profitability, engagement with government actors, and degree of access to services in the markets. The analysis highlights two main findings. First, informal traders report less harassment by government actors than has been observed in larger Nigerian cities. At the same time, however, the enabling environment is characterized by benign neglect whereby government-mandated oversight functions are not comprehensively implemented and service delivery gaps remain a major hindrance to food safety. Second, there are important differences in the needs of traders across cities, suggesting that policies focused on food safety and improving the livelihoods of this constituency more broadly need to be properly nuanced even at the subnational level.
