Feeding Africa’s cities is an urgent development challenge. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, and Africa will account for more than two-thirds of this growth. Costs of food insecurity and malnutrition – historically considered a rural problem – will increasingly be transferred to cities. The Food4Cities team is developing tools to help African cities plan to face these challenges.

Food4Cities combines statistical models for urban growth, land use change, and food access to understand the links between city food systems and the broader land system. This model integration allows us to explore future scenarios, analyse trade-offs, and identify opportunities for system transformation.

In February 2019, members of our project team visited key sites and met with planning and delivery partners in our two case study cities: Cape Town, South Africa and Kampala, Uganda. They spoke with government officials and food system specialists about how to feed these rapidly growing cities. In June 2019, we plan to visit our partners again to workshop our model and get their feedback on the prototype versions. Through these processes of stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production, Food4Cities aims to produce useful results for planning future food systems in rapidly changing African cities.