Study title

The Consuming Urban Poverty (CUP) project - based at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities - sought to generate an understanding of the connections between poverty, governance, urban space, and food. CUP research focused on secondary cities in three countries: Kisumu, Kenya; Kitwe, Zambia; and Epworth, Zimbabwe.The research included three quantitative surveys: A retail mapping exercise, a food vendor and retailer survey, and a household survey. Over 2,200 households and 1,200 food retailers were interviewed (between April 2016 and February 2017) in the three secondary cities. In addition, nearly 4,500 traders were mapped as part of a retailer census in these cities. The surveys examined the nature of the urban food system and the experience of food poverty. Qualitative in-depth interviews were also carried out in households across the three cities. A qualitative reverse value chain assessment was also undertaken, which traced five key food items (aligned to the food groups of protein, staple, vegetable, traditional food item and snack food) from the point of consumption to origin (or a point where no further information was available) in each city.Urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa are growing rapidly. While there has been considerable attention paid to the challenges of African mega-cities, the experiences of smaller urban areas have been relatively neglected. Secondary cities, with populations of less than half a million, are absorbing two-thirds of all urban population growth in Africa. This project focuses on three such cities to build a clearer picture of the dynamics of poverty in these kinds of urban spaces and to provide information and insights which can address poverty reduction. Poverty cannot be understood or addressed by focusing on poor individuals or households alone. Rather it needs to be understood as having many intersecting drivers operating at a range of scales, from the individual, to the neighbourhood, to the city and...