Dar es Salaam is a city of around 5 million people that is primarily feed by a form of territorial market with no corporate vertical or horizontal integration and little to no state coordination. Instead, this is a “symbiotic food system” based on the activities of a multitude of small-scale and interdependent actors operating based on common cultural repertoires and relations of at least familiarity. It is a food system that both ensures the provision of food in a way that is relatively accessible (cheaper and neare than the corporate supplies, such as supermarkets) to the poorer urban eaters and creates a large number of livelihood opportunities in urban and rural areas. This is most strongly demonstrated by the production and distribution of the key staple foods of maize and rice, with a long track record of delivering food at a city feeding scale and doing this in a way that makes a substantial contribution to rural development. It is not a static system; it is evolving, not least through the substantial increases in total production to keep pace with the needs of a fast-growing city. More should be done to learn from and build on these types of practices.
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Dr. Marc Wegerif