2.1 Features of households
2.2 Food management in urban households
2.3 Features of consumption patterns
The evolutionary approach in the study of FSDSs and analysis of constraints faced by cities and cosmopolitan areas have often been used by a number of experts to provide support for orthodox paradigms on the development of urban households. These studies usually attribute changes in the structure of urban households to such factors as the reduction in size of the household, a move away from polygamy and the rise of individualism. The process of change, which typically occurred among the urban elite in the colonial period, was seen by the experts as inevitable. However, it is evident that the rate of change in household structure has varied widely and the process has not been linear.
Household structure: The structure of urban households is the outcome of a very recent historical process in Africa, which is attributable in part to massive rural-urban migration. Even if changes in social structures have been influenced by the constraints of urban life, household behaviour tends to be based more on rural socio-cultural structures. In other words, the way people from rural societies adapt to towns must be seen in the context of social structures that are rural in origin. The ethnic background of households is, therefore, important in understanding the structure of African families in towns and cities.
The concept of the extended family has often been used to explain differences between the European nuclear family and the African model. It does not, however, take sufficient account of significant variations in situations broadly covered by the adjective “extended”. Experts on rural societies have sought to resolve this problem by attempting to define rural families on the basis of combinations of various social units with different social and economic functions, including residence, consumption, production and savings. In typical European households these functions tend to be congruent with the nuclear social unit (couple and children), but in rural African society they are separate.
Residence units: These represent one level of social segmentation, and in most cases correspond to a lineage or a segment of a lineage, with couples of different generations sharing the same residential space under the authority of one member, often the oldest.
Production units: These may be composed of one couple or several related couples farming the same land and managing their resources (land, capital, labour) in common.
Consumption units: These may be composed of one couple or several related couples who share meals and manage in common the food they produce or their income in order to ensure reproduction of their social unit.
Savings units: These may be composed of a couple, one of the spouses, or a segment of the household (for example a woman and her children), who save their resources separately.
The combinations of social and economic units vary depending on ethnic group, ranging from the Western-type mononuclear model to the polynuclear model covering several generations. Extreme cases are represented, on the one hand, by the Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups found in Mali and Senegal and the other by the Peul group found in most West-African countries. In the former type, the reference point is the lineage segment, which may comprise several generations living together in the same space. Production and consumption units are congruent with this residence unit and there can be as many as 50 people (20 couples) eating from the same kitchen and managing stores in common. In the latter type, each couple is an independent production and consumption unit. It rarely contains more than five people and, even though meals may be exchanged, a son-in-law cannot eat with his in-laws.
Migrants to towns and cities usually try to preserve the family model of their ethnic group, and this desire to maintain a particular identity entails a series of ideological considerations. In towns and cities the functions of residence, consumption and savings are separate, partly as a result of the fact that the function of production (employment) is independent in urban areas. Despite variations from town to town, it is common to find the following features characterising urban households:
In Ouagadougou, Emmanuelle Cheyns (1996) speaks of “household members and permanent guests” to describe the urban consumption unit. He estimates that “permanent guests” constitute about 1.39 out of an average of 7.5 people per household. The consumption unit excludes resident household members who eat outside without receiving any money for this from the head of household.
In Dakar, it is just as common for the household to cook for kin who live separately. In some cases, this takes place under a subscription scheme known as bool. At each meal, a plate is sent to the outside member of the consumption unit. This system began as an expression of solidarity with recent immigrants who were kin or recommended to the household, but the financial participation of immigrants was steadily formalised. Currently, poor families and women in medium-income families tend to incorporate the system into their consumption strategies. Bool subscribers become members of the consumption unit under various forms, including some with very explicit contracts, with “subscribers” being able to negotiate the number of meals and becoming more and more demanding.
Difficulties in finding individual housing partially explain this distinction between residence and consumption units. In some families, young couples prefer to stay with their relatives or share a house with their brothers. Each couple then asserts its independence by establishing an independent kitchen. Economic difficulties and sometimes the cultural heritage (as with the Soninke and the Toucouleur) may also lead to strategies of sharing meals or taking turns to cook for households or groups. In Dakar, the fall in purchasing power after devaluation led to a strategy in which brothers and unmarried working friends formed groups for consumption purposes.
Thus, contrary to theoretical predictions, there has been a trend towards polynuclear households, rather than individualisation. In Dakar, the number of polynuclear households grew from 7% of the population in 1969 to 23% in 1989. Data on the amalgamation of related households after devaluation of the CFA franc in 1993, as well as the shortage of housing and growing unemployment, indicate that polynuclear households are likely to become the dominant pattern in future. In Ouagadougou, the size of the household (consumption unit) grew in one year from 7.64 to 8.27 (Cheyns, 1996). Furthermore, about 40% of households in the city can be described as very large (over 8 people), a situation that is largely due to the fact that several couples join together in a household.
Polynuclearization can lead to two main types of food behaviour in households:
Household size and composition: The size of urban households is determined in large part by the type of household. Statistical averages conceal wide disparities, which affect food behaviour. In Dakar, the average number of persons per household is seven, but over 50% of households are above this average.
The size of households affects consumption behaviour. For large households whose diet is mainly cereal-based (in Dakar, Ouagadougou and Bamako), large stocks of such cereals as rice, maize and sorghum are usually held. Others who depend on root/tuber-based diets, however, tend to hold less stocks mainly because of the minimal processing that takes place prior to consumption and the style of cooking (Thuiler, 1991).
The age structure of urban households in Francophone Africa is typified by the case of Ouagadougou, where an average of 4 out of 7 of the population are children and Dakar, where 54% of the population is under 9 years old. A majority of the children in the population are under 7 years. This age structure of the urban population implies that food has to be prepared at home each day, even when parents work outside the home and sometimes have to spend the whole day away.
The division of responsibility for feeding the household is still largely determined by rural cultural values. The husband or head of family is responsible for procuring food for the whole family. In rural areas he is responsible for producing the staple cereals or tubers, building up stocks that the women manage, while in towns and cities he usually buys basic supplies and provides money (housekeeping money) for buying other ingredients like meat, fish and vegetables to his wife.
The housekeeping money is usually a fixed amount, but may be negotiated between a husband and his wife. In households with average but irregular incomes, the housekeeping money is paid daily but is fixed. In poorer households it is daily but uncertain, especially where it covers the purchase of cereals, since these families cannot afford to build up any real stocks. The provision of housekeeping money by rich families tends to be on monthly basis. Husbands and wives discuss the choice of dishes each day but children and dependants are rarely consulted. In practice the choice of meals to cook is made by wives, especially in polygamous households. When husbands “order” special dishes or invite guests, they are usually required to increase the housekeeping money by an amount that is negotiated.
How food is obtained: Consumption units obtain food by various means, depending on the type of food item and household income level.
Cereals: Cereals like rice and millet are usually purchased in bulk. Husbands are generally responsible for bulk purchases, often buying from the same suppliers regularly (in Dakar this usually means the “corner shop”). Cheyns (1996) reports that in Ouagadougou 60% of wholesale cereal purchases are made by men and 80% of retail purchases by women. In Cotonou many households buy directly from rural markets but bulk purchases tend to be concentrated in the main central Dantokpa market.
Low-income families usually buy rice and other cereals from retailers, and in such cases it is the women who are responsible for shopping. Families with large but irregular incomes tend to stock up for several months and supplement this with retail purchases whenever stocks run out.
Meat: Meat is usually bought from retail outlets and rarely stored. Only relatively rich families with refrigerators store meat, which in most cases is bought by husbands from abattoirs. Such families occasionally buy live sheep from the market.
In Dakar, there is a practice where an association or individuals in a given neighbourhood slaughter cattle, which is shared equally among cost-sharing participants.[3] Similar arrangements exist in workplaces to ensure supply of good quality meat at relatively low price. In Ouagadougou, households tend to store meat in the form of live poultry.
Fish: Fresh fish is usually in abundant supply in most cities but prices vary significantly. Refrigeration is replacing traditional storage methods (like pulping[4]). Only relatively rich families tend to have refrigerators, but the provision of refrigeration services is becoming quite common in working-class neighbourhoods with a few middle-income families, which have spare refrigeration capacity providing the service to neighbours at a fee.
Men are very rarely involved in purchasing fish since women are generally better skilled at haggling and identifying good quality fish.
Roots and tubers: These are quite often purchased from retail outlets and by women.
Condiments and vegetables: In all social categories, women are generally responsible for purchasing these items from retail outlets, usually on day-to-day basis. Working women tend to entrust servants or grown-up children with making such purchases. Households rarely stock vegetables that need to consumed in as fresh a state as possible but often engage in strategic inter or intra-seasonal stocking of others, depending market trends.
Women are traditionally responsible for processing food produce and preparing meals. The level of processing undertaken by the household depends on the type of dish. In Ouagadougou, preparation of the main dish (tò a maize/rice-based meal cooked with fat) requires preliminary processing of the maize or sorghum used. Generally, the women prefer to stock these cereals and undertake processing themselves rather than buy processed flour directly from the market.
Domestic processing of food is, however, problematic for most working women, except in cases where this can be entrusted to servants who are well-skilled in traditional methods of preparing food. In Senegal, for instance, because the process of preparing the traditional couscous is rather complex, most households tend to buy it in processed form from the market. The couscous industry is dominated by the Serère ethnic group (from processing to marketing). According to a survey of 26 districts in the Dakar urban area undertaken in September 1989 by USAID, most of the 94 millet processing plants (or mills) belonged to operators of Serère origin.
Cooking skills: Women pass cooking skills down from mother to daughter. This informal process starts during early childhood and is closely supervised at home. In most urban families, the availability of time for skill transfer is becoming a problem partly because school attendance leaves girls little time at home while working mothers increasingly rely on servants to cook.
The increasing role of servants in food preparation has contributed to the variety of dishes in urban households. Some of the servants receive professional training in domestic science centres and are a key factor in the spread of culinary skills in urban areas.
2.3.1 Diet and nutrition
One of the effects of urban lifestyle on food consumption by households is increased demand for cooked dishes and processed products. The consequent increased dependence on imports can only be minimised if efficient and dynamic marketing and distribution systems that enable domestic producers to better integrate their products into the market in response to consumer preferences are promoted. This requires investment in physical and institutional infrastructure to facilitate the flow of market information to producers. Due to the considerable financial constraints it faces, the state is incapable of providing the required facilities and needs to attract private investments by maintaining an enabling stable political and macro-economic environment.
Attempts to improve FSDSs may be impeded by conflicts arising from an apparent trade-off between the goal of enhancing market efficiency and social objectives in terms of jobs creation. This is particularly the case where there is a perception that such initiatives impact negatively on the informal small-scale sector and women who play an important role in the supply of food to the urban poor. To minimise these conflicts, the policymaking process should involve extensive consultation with all key stakeholders in the public or private sectors, including in particular traders, municipal authorities, chambers of commerce and consumers associations. The initiatives of development should also be based on a detailed interdisciplinary analysis of urban food demand and its impact on the structure and organisation of food marketing systems. Furthermore, the objectives pursued should be clear and consistent with the specific problems and circumstances prevailing in each particular town or city.
