The ways in which rapid urbanization of the Global South are transforming food systems and food supply chains, and the food security of urban populations is an often neglected topic. This international group of authors addresses this profound transformation from a variety of different perspectives and disciplinary lenses, providing an important corrective to the dominant view that food insecurity is a rural problem requiring increases in agricultural production. Starting from the premise that food security in urban areas is primarily a challenge of food access, the chapters explore the various economic, social, and governance policies and structures that constrain and inhibit the access of all to food of sufficient quantity and quality. As the Global South continues to urbanize, the challenge of feeding hungry cities will become even more daunting, and this Handbook explains why the existing food system, although undergoing rapid change, is inadequate for this task and cannot meet the challenge without substantial reform. The Handbook as a whole, and the individual chapters, provide comprehensive overviews of relevant themes mixed with empirical, real-world examples for university readership teaching and taking courses on food systems, migration and urbanization, urban policy and planning, geography, agricultural economics, public health, and international development. It will also introduce practitioners to current debates in the field and provide strong support for the renewed, and growing, focus on the food security of urban populations. The Handbook's comprehensive overviews of relevant themes mixed with empirical, real-world examples are ideal for university readership. It will also introduce practitioners to current debates in the field and provide strong support for the renewed, and growing, focus on the food security of urban populations.

Urban population growth is extremely rapid across Africa and this book places urban food and nutrition security firmly on the development and policy agenda. It shows that current efforts to address food poverty in Africa that focus entirely on small-scale farmers, to the exclusion of broader socio-economic and infrastructural approaches, are misplaced and will remain largely ineffective in ameliorating food and nutrition insecurity for the majority of Africans. Using original data from the African Food Security Urban Network's (AFSUN) extensive database it is demonstrated that the primary food security challenge for urban households is access to food. Already linked into global food systems and value chains, Africa's supply of food is not necessarily in jeopardy. Rather, the widespread poverty and informal urban fabric that characterizes Africa's emerging cities impinge directly on households' capacity to access food that is readily available. Through the analysis of empirical data collected from 6,500 households in eleven cities in nine countries in Southern Africa, the authors identify the complexity of factors and dynamics that create the circumstances of widespread food and nutrition insecurity under which urban citizens live. They also provide useful policy approaches to address these conditions that currently thwart the latent development potential of Africa's expanding urban population.

This text examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder. The common thread of the enclosed essays is the language and rhetoric of the development text. By conceptualizing development as a discourse, the book argues that development cannot simply be reduced to the outworking of deeper economic logics and structures but has its own logic, internal coherence and effects. The text discusses three main questions: how and why does the language of development change over time?; what role does geography play in the language and practices of development?; and is it possible to imagine a world in which development has no redeeming features or power? At the same time, the book rejects the postmodern concept that the texts of development must be situated within the power-laden political and institutional context out of which they arise and to which they speak.

Urban population growth is extremely rapid across Africa and this book places urban food and nutrition security firmly on the development and policy agenda. It shows that current efforts to address food poverty in Africa that focus entirely on small-scale farmers, to the exclusion of broader socio-economic and infrastructural approaches, are misplaced and will remain largely ineffective in ameliorating food and nutrition insecurity for the majority of Africans. Using original data from the African Food Security Urban Network's (AFSUN) extensive database it is demonstrated that the primary food security challenge for urban households is access to food. Already linked into global food systems and value chains, Africa's supply of food is not necessarily in jeopardy. Rather, the widespread poverty and informal urban fabric that characterizes Africa's emerging cities impinge directly on households' capacity to access food that is readily available. Through the analysis of empirical data collected from 6,500 households in eleven cities in nine countries in Southern Africa, the authors identify the complexity of factors and dynamics that create the circumstances of widespread food and nutrition insecurity under which urban citizens live. They also provide useful policy approaches to address these conditions that currently thwart the latent development potential of Africa's expanding urban population.

This book examines the power of development to imagine new worlds and to constantly reinvent itself as the solution to problems of national and global disorder, yet argues that development cannot simply be reduced to the outworking of deeper economic logics and structures, but has its own logic, internal coherence and effects.

Conceptualizing development as discourse, the enclosed essays discuss the changing language of development, argue the role of geography in development practices, and entertain the possibility that development has no redeeming features or power when situated within its political and institutional context.

Combining abstract analyses of development discourse with concrete global case studies of how that discourse is constructed and operates in particular times and places, The Power of Development stakes out the terrain for post-marxist development studies in a post-marxian world.

This book powerfully demonstrates that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees. Yet far from being lauded, they take their life into their hands when they trade on South Africa’s “mean streets”.

The book draws attention to what they bring to their adopted country through research into previously unexamined areas of migrant entrepreneurship. Ranging from studies of how migrants have created booming agglomeration economies in Jeppe and Ivory Park in Johannesburg, to guanxi networks of Chinese entrepreneurs, to competition and cooperation among Somali shop owners, to cross-border informal traders, to the informal transport operators between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the chapters in this book reveal the positive economic contributions of migrants. These include generating employment, paying rents, providing cheaper goods to poor consumers, and supporting formal sector wholesalers and retailers. As well, Mean Streets highlights the xenophobic responses to migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in running a successful business on the streets.

Mean Streets is a refreshingly rich empirical documentation of the economic prospects and possibilities for South Africa of the creativity and entrepreneurship of international migrants. It is mostly a study of missed opportunities for the South African state and government, who prefer to confront immigrants with legal obstacles and regulatory mechanisms than offer them the police, official and social protection they crave to excel as businesses.

The world recently watched with dismay as South African citizens violently attacked foreign nationals in communities across the country. Tens of thousands of migrants were displaced, amid mass looting and destruction of foreign-owned homes, property and businesses. Senior officials and politicians seemed bemused and perplexed by the xenophobic violence. The media was quick to advance several theories about the mayhem. One focused on historical factors, particularly South Africa’s divisive and alienating apartheid past. Another blamed poverty and the daily struggle for existence in many of South Africa’s poorer communities. A third criticized the ANC government for poor service delivery and a failure to redistribute the fruits of the post-apartheid economic boom to the poor. Finally, the country’s immigration policies were seen as at fault. None of these theories explicitly tackles the phenomenon of xenophobia itself. In late 2006 SAMP undertook a national survey of the attitudes of the South African population towards foreign nationals in the country. The data from this survey allows us to analyze the state of the nation’s mind on immigration, immigrants and refugees in the period immediately prior to the recent upsurge of xenophobic violence in South Africa. By comparing the results with those of previous surveys conducted by SAMP in the 1990s, we are also able to see if attitudes have changed and in what ways. Are they better now than they were in the days that prompted the South African Human Rights Commission to set up its Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign and partner with SAMP in a study of immigration, xenophobia and human rights in the country? Has xenophobia softened or hardened in the intervening years? Are xenophobic attitudes as widespread and vitriolic as they were then? How many South Africans were poised, in 2006, to turn their negative thoughts about foreign nationals into actions to “cleanse” their neighbourhoods and streets of fellow Africans? The 2006 SAMP Xenophobia Survey shows that South Africa exhibits levels of intolerance and hostility to outsiders unlike virtually anything seen in other parts of the world. For example: Compared to citizens of other countries worldwide, South Africans are the least open to outsiders and want the greatest restrictions on immigration. Earlier data showed a hardening of attitudes in the late 1990s. The proportion of people wanting strict limits or a total prohibition on immigration rose from 65% in 1997 to 78% in 1999 and the proportion of those favouring immigration if there were jobs available fell from 29% to 12%. Similarly restrictive views still prevail. Two changes were evident in 2006, one positive and one negative. On the positive side,the proportion who agree to employed-related immigration rose from 12% in 1999 to 23% in 2006. In part, this reflects the immigration policy shift in 2002 which promoted a new skills-based approach. On the negative, the proportion of those wanting a total ban on immigration increased from 25% in to 35% in 2006. And 84% feel that South Africa is allowing “too many” foreign nationals into the country. Nearly 50% support or strongly support the deportation of foreign nationals including those living legally in South Africa. Only 18% strongly oppose such a policy. Nearly three-quarters (74%) support a policy of deporting anyone who is not contributing economically to South Africa. Some 61% support the deportation of foreign nationals who test positive for HIV or have AIDS with a mere 9% strongly opposed. If migrants are allowed in, South Africans want them to come alone, as they were forced to in the apartheid period. Less than 20% think it should be easier for families of migrants to come with them to South Africa.

Countries across Africa are rapidly transitioning from rural to urban societies. The UN projects that 60% of people living in Africa will be in urban areas by 2050, with the urban population on the continent tripling over the next 50 years. The challenge of building inclusive and sustainable cities in the context of rapid urbanization is arguably the critical development issue of the 21st Century and creating food secure cities is key to promoting health, prosperity, equity, and ecological sustainability. The expansion of Africa's urban population is taking place largely in secondary cities: these are broadly defined as cities with fewer than half a million people that are not national political or economic centres. The implications of secondary urbanization have recently been described by the Cities Alliance as "a real knowledge gap", requiring much additional research not least because it poses new intellectual challenges for academic researchers and governance challenges for policy-makers. International researchers coming from multiple points of view including food studies, urban studies, and sustainability studies, are starting to heed the call for further research into the implications for food security of rapidly growing secondary cities in Africa. This book will combine this research and feature comparable case studies, intersecting trends, and shed light on broad concepts including governance, sustainability, health, economic development, and inclusivity. This is an open access book.

South Africa's gold mining workforce has the highest prevalence rates of tuberculosis and HIV infection of any industrial sector in the country. The contract migrant labour system, which has long outlived apartheid, is responsible for this unacceptable situation. The spread of HIV to rural communities in Southern Africa is not well understood. The accepted wisdom is that migrants leave for the mines, engage in high-risk behaviour, contract the virus and return to infect their rural partners. This model fails to deal with the phenomenon of rural-rural transmission and cases of HIV discordance (when the female migrant is infected and the male migrant not). Nor does it reveal whether all rural partners are equally at risk of infection. This study examines the vulnerability of rural partners in southern Mozambique and southern Swaziland, which are two major source areas for migrant miners. It presents the results of surveys with miners and partners in these two sending-areas and affords the opportunity to compare two different mine-sending areas. The two areas are not only geographically and culturally different, they have had contrasting experiences with the mine labour system over the last two decades. The spread of HIV in Southern Africa in the 1990s coincided with major downsizing and retrenchment in the gold mining industry which impacted differently on Mozambique and Swaziland. Swaziland has been in decline as a source of mine migrants while Mozambique remained a relatively stable source of mine migrants. The study therefore aims not only to shed light on vulnerability in mine sending areas, but also to draw out any contrasts that might exist between two mine-sending areas that were inserted into the mine migrant labour system in different ways during the expansion of the HIV epidemic.

The relationship between migration, development and remittances in Lesotho has been exhaustively studied for the period up to 1990. This was an era when the vast majority of migrants from Lesotho were young men working on the South African gold mines and over 50 percent of households had a migrant mineworker. Since 1990, patterns of migration to South Africa have changed dramatically. The reconfiguration of migration between the two countries has had a marked impact on remittance flows to Lesotho. The central question addressed in this report is how the change in patterns of migration from and within Lesotho since 1990 has impacted on remittance flows and usage.

The ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe has led to an unprecedented exodus of over a million desperate people from all strata of Zimbabwean society. The Zimbabwean diaspora is now truly global in extent. Yet rather than turning their backs on Zimbabwe, most maintain very close links with the country, returning often and remitting billions of dollars each year. Zimbabwe's Exodus. Crisis, Migration, Survival is written by leading migration scholars many from the Zimbabwean diaspora. The book explores the relationship between Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis and migration as a survival strategy. The book includes personal stories of ordinary Zimbabweans living and working in other countries, who describe the hostility and xenophobia they often experience.