Urban Food Systems Governance and Poverty in African Cities by Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson

This book presents the findings of an international collaborative research project that aimed to improve our understanding of the connections between urban poverty, food systems, household food security and governance, by focusing on three secondary cities in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa. On the whole, colonial governments sought to prevent people from moving into urban areas, not least because of the potentially politically destabilising effects of population concentrations. Where urban workers were needed, the colonial powers developed urban policies and governance systems that were strongly influenced by European ideas about well-planned towns and cities and public health concerns but disenfranchised urban residents. In these contexts, colonial governments did indeed pay attention to food, through measures that sought to ensure a supply of cheap food for wage workers (a continuing priority for post-independence governments). The reality of increasing rural–urban migration and governance arrangements that were incapable of keeping pace with the demands of low-income urban growth were soon clear, but governments were reluctant to admit the shortcomings of their own policies and urban management systems.