The food environment and health in African cities

Abstract

The ‘food environment’ of cities can be defined as the location and type of food sources, as well as the broader environmental factors that affect the production, retail and consumption of food in cities (such as levels of infrastructure). The food environment of cities has an impact on the health and wellbeing of residents, although the measurement of this impact has proved to be difficult. Although there is a growing body of research on the effect of food environments on health, this relationship has been under-recognised and under-studied in the global south (Herforth and Ahmed, 2015; Turner et al., 2017). Understanding the food environments of African cities is important because there are high levels of food insecurity in African cities, driven by high levels of poverty and income variability (Battersby and Watson, 2018), and interventions in urban food environments can potentially contribute to improving health outcomes. Food security can be defined as people’s ‘physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2009: 1). The reality in African cities is very different. A survey of food security in eleven southern African cities found 76 per cent of sampled households to be moderately or severely food-insecure, in other words they often do not have enough food to eat for their minimum dietary needs (Frayne et al., 2010). An estimated 47 per cent of Food environment and health in African cities