The South African, and wider African, food system is undergoing a rapid transformation, with an associated transformation in nutrition. Both transformations are most advanced in cities where the food system is increasingly characterized by the presence of supermarkets and fast food outlets in malls selling highly processed foods. While local government has no clear formal mandate to address the food system, this paper argues that it is playing a profound role in reshaping the food system through non-food related planning and policy decisions designed to achieve urban development objectives. This paper uses a case study of the changing food system in Cape Town, South Africa, as an entry point to examine the urban planning agenda that is inadvertently generating a food system that undermines food security. The paper therefore presents a 20-year geography of supermarket expansion in the city and a discussion on the impact of developer-led urban development in the form of the shopping mall on the food system. The paper argues that the absence of concerted food system planning has negatively impacted food and nutrition security. It concludes by suggesting that new opportunities for more inclusive urban food systems planning are being aff orded by UN-Habitat's New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.

This paper presents data from the African Food Security Urban Network's 2008 baseline survey of Cape Town. This survey found that 80% of the sampled households could be classified as moderately or severely food insecure. In urban areas the main driver of food insecurity is not availability but access. Access is typically viewed as being directly related to income. Households were found to use formal food markets, but more frequently depended on informal sector markets and informal social safety nets. The more food insecure and income poor a household was, the more likely it was to be dependent on less formal means of securing food. This suggests that there is some form of market failure in the formal food system. This paper therefore advocates for a food systems approach that validates and supports the role that the informal sector plays in urban food security.

As Africa urbanises and the focus of poverty shifts to urban centres, there is an imperative to address poverty in African cities. This is particularly the case in smaller cities, which are often the most rapidly urbanising, but the least able to cope with this growth. This book argues that an examination of the food system and food security provides a valuable lens to interrogate urban poverty. Chapters examine the linkages between poverty, urban food systems and local governance with a focus on case studies from three smaller or secondary cities in Africa: Kisumu (Kenya), Kitwe (Zambia) and Epworth (Zimbabwe). The book makes a wider contribution to debates on urban studies and urban governance in Africa through analysis of the causes and consequences of the paucity of urban-scale data for decision makers, and by presenting potential methodological innovations to address this paucity. As the global development agenda is increasingly focusing on urban issues, most notably the urban goal of the new Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda, the work is timely. The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315191195, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.