Chapter 3. CHANGES IN FACTORS AFFECTING URBAN FOOD CONSUMPTION

3.1 Physical availability of produce in cities
3.2 Purchasing power
3.3 Conditions of life in African cities
3.4 Cultural influences on food choice
3.5 Household food supply systems

3.1 Physical availability of produce in cities

The segmentation of towns and cities into neighbourhoods with different socio-economic backgrounds is a key factor governing the availability of food. In most African towns and cities built during the colonial period, the major markets are located in the centre, as for example is the case in Dakar (Sandaga and Kermel), Cotonou (Dantokpa) and Ouagadougou (the Great Market). These are generally not wholesale markets but rather large retail markets with a very wide range of goods. Access to these markets is relatively easy for those living in central districts where supermarkets selling luxury products of European origin are also found.

Secondary markets and shops are found in more distant districts. Wealthy neighbourhoods, therefore, have easy access to produce and are also in a better bargaining position since they have more information on prices. This advantage applies to locally grown produce as much as to imports. Those living further from the centre have little choice about quality and are dependent on middlemen, usually micro-retailers. Some local products, such as soumbala in Ouagadougou and palm oil in Cotonou and Dakar, are distributed directly by ethnographic distribution networks through which neighbourhood traders maintain links with producer-processors in villages.

3.2 Purchasing power

Public sector employees account for a dominant share of urban incomes. Dakar for instance accounts for 55% of the total salaries paid to public sector employees in Senegal (Ministry of the Interior, 1994). The situation is very much similar in other capital cities, where administrative and public service infrastructure is usually concentrated.[5] Incomes in the commercial and industrial sectors also vary from city to city and are relatively higher and more secure than for those in the low-income social strata, which are irregular and unstable.

The wide variation in urban household incomes is revealed by a survey conducted in Dakar by the Statistics Department (Ministry of Finance and Planning, 1995) showing the following 5 categories of households on the basis of annual incomes:

(1) under 342 000 CFAF/year (i.e. 28 800 CFAF/month)
(2) 342 000 - 655 000 CFAF/year (54 500 CFAF/month)
(3) 655 001 - 1 080 000 CFAF/year (90 000 CFAF/month)
(4) 1 080 001 - 1 872 000 CFAF/year (156 000 CFAF/month)
(5) over 1 872 000 CFAF/year

Although differences in household income lead to social differentiation, its effect on the choice of basic staples is relatively less significant than on the proportion (in terms of quantity) of various food produce consumed. Generally, a reduction in the proportion consumed occurs in the following order:

• fresh meat/fish
• oil
• condiments
• vegetables
• cereals

Thus, when the purchasing power of households fall, meat and fish are sacrificed before staple vegetables and cereals. Indeed, the consumption of meat may symbolise wealth as, in general, the poorer the household, the less meat-based meals are consumed.

In most African towns and cities, structural adjustment policies and devaluation have accentuated the incidence of poverty. The economic recession of the 1970-80s in SSA contributed to a rise in the number of poor households. Average non-agricultural cash income fell by 45% between 1978 and 1985. West African states in the Franc zone recorded a 30% drop in employment in the modern (formal) sector between 1979 and 1984.

Apart from significant labour retrenchment by private and public sector organisations, there has also been a number of instances of non-payment of salaries for prolonged periods in some countries. The devaluation of the CFA franc in January 1994, in particular, resulted in a marked reduction in the purchasing power and quality of life of many urban households.

Most people in urban areas have, therefore, had to resort to individual and collective survival strategies. For the poorest, food security constitutes a basic problem around which households evolve strategies to cope with rising cost of living. Men engage in several activities since available employment opportunities are often temporary and poorly paid. In order to supplement the declining incomes of their husbands’ and consequent reduction in the contribution to household food consumption expenditure, most women engage in petty trading and other micro-enterprise activities like sewing and brewing traditional beer on permanent or temporary basis. Street food trade usually represents a first step in the integration of women into the urban economy, as it requires very minimal capital and training. Children in most poor urban households also drop out of school and engage in activities like guarding cars, porterage in markets or sometimes even begging or stealing.

Some urban households are particularly prone to food insecurity under these circumstances. They include:

• Recent migrants from rural areas who are usually unskilled and have difficulty with integrating into the urban economic system;
• Single mothers (widows or unmarried mothers);
• Newly-poor formal sector workers, whose purchasing power falls sharply as a result of long periods of non-payment of salaries or whose low salaries weaken their capacity to cope with rising prices during lean or poor farming seasons; and
• Urban households engaged in fiercely competitive and poorly paid activities in the informal sector (like water-porterage, petty trading, micro-retailing of food).

Social systems of solidarity, which are characteristic of rural areas but also quite strong in some towns and cities, sometimes enable urban households to cope with food insecurity problems. For example, family networks that facilitate the transfer of food produce between rural and urban households are essential for managing food security problems especially during lean seasons or in the case of famine. These supply networks are particularly important for recent migrants who maintain strong rural links. However, economic pressures contributing to falling urban real incomes are steadily weakening the informal family support systems. Consequently, some relatively wealthy urban households even prefer to take their meals outside the home in order to avoid social obligations to poorer relations.

The issue of food security among the very poor deserves in-depth study. The basic question that has to be examined is whether growing food insecurity among the urban poor is a structural fact to which FSDSs must adapt or it should be seen as a social aberration to be resolved by tackling the root problem of unemployment.

3.3 Conditions of life in African cities

The historical development of African cities reveals a process in which work places and services infrastructure have become increasingly concentrated in city centres and far removed from residential areas. Thus, most households incur substantial travel costs (in terms of time and money) especially since transport and communication systems in most cities are poor and inefficient. This is particularly the case for most low-income households and informal sector employees living in shantytowns or suburbs far removed from city centres.

These conditions impose limitations on home consumption of meals, especially midday meals. As a result, some members of the urban household (usually working men and women) take their midday meals at workplaces while meals for their children and other dependants have to prepared at home in advance. This increases the household food expenditure, inducing readjustments in budgets, with spending on the midday meals for children and dependants being kept at the barest minimum.

Workers tend to have a lot of options in terms of access to meals at work places. Restaurants offer a variety of dishes. In most cases cash payment is required for the meals but regular customers of particular restaurants can arrange various credits (often involving settlement of bills at the end of the month). There are also a few cases where workers form groups that provide finance to a particular woman to prepare meals for them.[6] The system may be restrictive and women tend to exploit this niche by delivering meals cooked at home.

This initiative has been growing in popularity in Dakar since the introduction of a non-stop working day for government employees. It has advantages in terms of both quality and flexibility for the two parties. Prices are relatively lower because the women incur no additional expenses in renting cooking space and facilities. It is flexible for the customers because they can decide to miss some meals, depending on the state of their finances and other priority needs. Food quality has also been noted as an additional advantage. Furthermore, the system tends to strengthen bonds between employees who share meals and the women preparing the food.

Households can make significant savings by preparing shared meals. For instance, in Dakar the lowest price for a restaurant meal (a sandwich or a cooked dish) is about CFAF 350. Hence, the cost for a family of ten would be about CFAF 3,500, which would be adequate for preparing at least two good quality meals.[7]

Where individual eating is the custom and meals are available at reasonable prices, each family member may be given a daily stipend for this purpose. This is quite common in Cotonou, where the basic diet is mashed tubers with sauce. Figures from a budget/consumption survey carried out in Cotonou show that over a seven-day period households prepare meals at home only 1.8 times. “These are supplemented by ready-made dishes or other items bought by three-quarters of those surveyed at a rate of 3.65 items per day. In other words, only one-third of the 5.49 items used per day per household is cooked at home” (Cerdan & Bricas, 1996).

The consumption of ready-made dishes, whether at home, in the street, workplaces, schools or in small restaurants, has become a very common feature of eating habits in Cotonou. Out of an average weekly household food expenditure of CFAF 4,145, it is estimated that about 26% (CFAF 1,091) is spent on street food. This habit creates flexibility that enables people access to types of food that they can not prepare or eat at home because of the demands of urban life. It also enables the disadvantaged to feed themselves at relatively low cost.

In most urban households evening meals are taken together at home but about 14% of those surveyed indicated that they took such meals “outside the home”. There is no available data on the prices of ready-made dishes in Cotonou but they do not vary appear significantly, undoubtedly because of the types of dishes involved mainly include meals prepared with cereals and processed roots and tubers like fermented maize mash (akassa) and cassava semolina (gari).

3.4 Cultural influences on food choice

3.4.1 Food and cultural identity
3.4.2 Meals as occasions for socialisation
3.4.3 Perception of different types of food

3.4.1 Food and cultural identity

Food constitutes a basic element in the cultural identity of urban migrants. They tend to preserve some of the typical eating habits of their region of origin. There is, therefore, diversity in the eating habits of most African cities, a reflection of their cosmopolitan nature. For instance, one finds in Dakar migrants from the south of Senegal who prefer meals cooked with palm oil while in Cotonou[8] the main dishes originate from the rural southern regions of Benin.

This desire to preserve the cultural identity of individuals and groups is also found to influence the choice of local processed produce used by households in preparing traditional meals. Cheyns (1995) notes that “eating soumbala, (a dish typical of Burkina Faso) allows people to express cultural identity as members of specific regions in the country”. Since the method of preparation differs from region to region, “eating soumbala prepared in or by someone of the same ethnic or geographic origin is seen as an expression of a person’s cultural identity”. The situation is similar in the case of couscous in Dakar, where for example members of the Serère ethnic group usually buy slightly fermented couscous from women of the same group.

3.4.2 Meals as occasions for socialisation

Meal times often constitute occasions when families traditionally get together around its head. They usually create opportunity for reaffirmation of the position and roles of members of the family, especially the head. The management of the popote or housekeeping money by women is a daily reaffirmation of their central role in the household. This role that meals play in social integration, communication and education explains why urban families have such difficulty adapting to a non-stop working day and their frustration, since only relatively well-off families manage to satisfy this cultural need.

3.4.3 Perception of different types of food

The way some types of food are perceived significantly affects procurement behaviour by households. For example, many African women feel rightly or wrongly that frozen meat has less flavour and is less healthy than that of freshly slaughtered livestock and, therefore, tend to use less of it in meals prepared at home. Cheyns (1995) attributes this choice of meat for its freshness rather than tenderness to what he describes as a “taste trajectory”. Certain dishes are also perceived as “poor people’s food” or “rich people’s food”. In Senegal, for example, rice dishes in which fresh fish is replaced with dried or smoked fish is considered food for poor people. Even where such dishes are more nutritious as argued by nutritionists, there is strong resistance to their consumption because of the social class perceptions attached to them. At the opposite end of the spectrum, meat- and chicken-based dishes are considered rich people’s food. The same distinctions can be found in Ouagadougou where the consumption of noodle and tubers declines with falling purchasing power.

3.5 Household food supply systems

3.5.1 Household production
3.5.2 Market shopping
3.5.3 Access to cooked food

The main means by which households obtain food supplies in urban areas include household production, wholesale or sub-wholesale purchase from rural and urban markets and retail purchases from markets and hawkers.

3.5.1 Household production

Urban households depend less on subsistence production than is the case in rural areas. From Cheyns’ (1996) estimates, only 5.4% of households in Ouagadougou produced cereals for subsistence.[9] According to his survey, about 9.3% of the total consumption of cereals was supplied as gifts from relations rural areas. The situation is similar in Dakar, although such gifts tend to come more from peri-urban areas within 50-60 kilometres of the capital city.

In Cotonou, subsistence production accounts for 10% of cereals and 6% of tubers and roots (the most widely consumed food). The figure for meat is 2% (mainly from domestic poultry keeping). Although surveys available from Senegal do not address this matter, anecdotal evidence indicates that market gardening in urban areas is declining under increasing urban land pressure. Small-scale poultry keeping is on the increase in working-class districts, but an assessment of the impact of this activity on household meat consumption has not been undertaken. Similarly, there are no definitive estimates of the contribution of fish to protein intake by urban households even though fishermen constitute a significant section of the population in cities like Dakar.

3.5.2 Market shopping

The main sources from which urban households procure food include rural markets, importers, urban wholesale and large retail markets, secondary markets, small neighbourhood markets, local shops and supermarkets. These units have distinct functions but in most cases provide a combination of services depending on the food items sold and local situation.

Quite often the marketing and distribution units act not only as channels for the supply of food to consumers, but also provide a social function. They are places where networks of relationships are established and information is exchanged on all aspects of human life, from material to spiritual life. This multiplicity of functions creates difficulties in analysing particular units in the chain. Quantitative analysis is particularly difficult, for which reason this study relied extensively on qualitative analysis.

Quite often the marketing and distribution units act not only as channels for the supply of food to consumers, but also provide a social function. They are places where networks of relationships are established and information is exchanged on all aspects of social life, from material to spiritual life. This multiplicity of functions creates difficulties in analysing particular units in the chain. Quantitative analysis is particularly difficult, for which reason this study relied extensively on qualitative analysis.

The evidence as summarised in Table 1 indicates that, even though urban wholesale and retail constitute the main sources of supply to most households, direct purchases from rural markets is still important in cities like Cotonou (where 17% of households obtain supplies from such locations). Patronage of rural markets is in most cases not systematic but undertaken occasionally as members households take advantage of social and professional trips to buy relatively cheaper supplies from rural areas.

Supermarkets are generally the least patronised in towns and cities. They are patronised mainly by middle and relatively wealthier classes. In less wealthy neighbourhoods, mini-markets and local shops usually retail supermarket-type items like cheese, milk, sausage, cakes and drinks.[10] The same situation applies to modern butchers’ shops (in Bamako, Ouagadougou and Dakar) which offer quality meat preferred by middle-income and well-off households. Meat sold by these butchers is classified along Western standards and prices tend to be relatively higher than supplies from other sources (Cheyns, 1995). Fish and meat are usually bought from large retail markets.

Table 1: Provisioning methods: items and places

City	Item	Rural markets	Wholesale markets	Secondary markets	Modern facilities	Traditional facilities	Street-fixed	Street-mobile
Dakar	Millet	+	++	+
	Rice			++	+	+++
	Oil			++		+++
	Meat		+	++	+	+++
	Fish		+	++				+++
	Vegetables		+	++			+++
	Cooked dishes				++	++		+
	Condiments			++			++
	Tubers
	Cereals	+++		++			++	++
	Vegetables			+
Cotonou	Meat			+		+
	Fish			++
	Cooked dishes					++	+++	+++
	Rice	+	++	+	+	+++
	Maize	+++	+++	+		+
	Sorghum	++	+	+
Ouagadougou	Meat	+		+++	+	+		+
	Fish			+++
	Cooked dishes				++		+++
	Condiments	++		+			+++

Key:
+ infrequent ++ frequent +++ predominant

Rural markets: all purchases made near production areas, directly from the grower, at abattoirs in the case of meat and at beaches in the case of fish.

Secondary markets: all district or neighbourhood markets whatever their size, where a wide range of goods are available (cereals, meat, cooked items, fish, etc.).

Modern facilities: supermarkets, neighbourhood mini-markets, modern butchers’ shops and stalls, fishmongers and restaurants in a fully enclosed place.

Traditional facilities: neighbourhood stores and traditional neighbourhood butchers’ shops in sheds.

Street - fixed: sales points in the street with makeshift, open-air facilities (tables, etc.).

Street - mobile: vendors who carry their merchandise around.

3.5.3 Access to cooked food

In addition to price and quality, the choice of cooked meals is usually influenced by factors like proximity, trust in the culturally-determined skills and household income. Consumption of cooked food supplied by informal sector providers “on the streets” is increasingly becoming the norm rather than an occasional supplement in many cities. This is particularly the case for poorer households.

The supply situation for cooked food differs from city to city. For instance, in Cotonou, there is a stable supply of cooked dishes of acceptable quality largely as a result of a well-organised network of small-scale units engaged in processing of local produce and preparation of cooked meals.[11] The situation in Dakar is very different. Home-based cooking using imported foodstuffs remains the norm.

Choice based on trust in cooking skills mainly occurs because specialised skills in the preparation of some types of cooked food tend to be associated with particular ethnic groups. For example, the Mauritanians and Hausas in Dakar are considered specialists in preparing grilled meat. The ethnic background of the producer/seller is, therefore, a fundamental factor influencing patronage. Even though hygiene may be important to some consumers, especially middle-class consumers, it is usually of marginal importance to most customers. In Cotonou, these ethnic-based skills are especially important, because most of the dishes are made of fermented mash, thus increasing food poisoning risks if not well prepared.

rice: 2 kg at 250 CFAF/kg = CFAF 500
oil:? litre at 650 CFAF/l = CFAF 325
fish: CFAF 500
vegetables: CFAF 250
condiments: CFAF 200
energy: CFAF 125
total: CFAF 1 900, or CFAF 190 per person