Africa’s Urban Food and Nutrition Transition: A Call to Action
This paper calls for Africa – particularly African cities – to drive the continent’s urban transition agenda
Abstract
With urbanisation taking place at a rapid rate and Africa set to cross the threshold into being predominantly urban shortly after 2030, this paper calls for Africa – particularly African cities – to drive the continent’s urban transition agenda. It sets out carefully considered actions required from affected stakeholders in Africa’s urban food and nutrition challenge.
This paper is a redrafted call to action that was conceptualised in preparation for discussion at a 2016 Consuming Urban Poverty/African Food Security Urban Network/Hungry Cities Partnership policy workshop. The workshop, on “Food Consumption and Food and Nutrition Security in Africa’s Hungry Cities” was held at the World Nutrition Conference at the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, from 29 August to 3 September 2016. Subsequent to input from workshop participants, further input was solicited via targeted social media over a period of 30 days. The call to action and this working paper reflect these inputs and debates. The consultative process reached just over 4,000 people.
This work is part of the ‘Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa’ project and was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department for International Development.
Citation
Battersby, Jane, and Haysom, Gareth (2016), Africa’s Urban Food and Nutrition Transition: A Call to Action, Consuming Urban Poverty Project Working Paper No. 1, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town.
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