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Addressing food security in African cities

In sub-Saharan Africa, the food system impacts on a number of urban development issues such as poverty, unemployment and poor health. Informal traders meet the food needs of many poor urban households. However, supermarket chains are changing this, demanding particular policy and planning responses.

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Fig. 1: Ten most-frequently-used sources of food, Kisumu, Kenya, 2016.
Fig. 2: Proportion of total food purchased by households sourced directly from supermarkets, Kisumu, Kenya 2016.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council / Department for International Development (ESRC/DFID) Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (grant number ES/L008610/1) for the Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa (Consuming Urban Poverty) project.

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Correspondence to Vanessa Watson.

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Battersby, J., Watson, V. Addressing food security in African cities. Nat Sustain 1, 153–155 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0051-y

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