October the 16th is World Food Day. In the mix of many “World Days”, one may rightly question the allocation of just one day for such an issue. Given the high levels of hunger and food insecurity, should every day not be a World Food Day? This argument has merit. Far more attention, and outrage needs to be directed at the state of hunger and food insecurity globally. According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2024 report (SOFI) “about 152 million more people may have faced hunger in 2023 compared to 2019”.
However, it is worth using World Food Day to reflect on current positions and to ask whether a change in focus, or new areas of attention, might offer alternative avenues for action, new sites of struggle through which to reverse the stubborn rise in food and nutrition insecurity?
The focus of World Food Day 2024 is “Right to foods for a better life and a better future”. The Right to Food and the framing of food as a right is not only derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, it is also a key right embodied, in some way, in many national constitutions, particularly more recent constitutions evident across African countries.
The Right to Food is a human right protecting the right of people to feed themselves in dignity. This means that there needs to be sufficient food available, that people have the means to access it, and that it adequately meets the individual’s dietary needs. States have a duty to respect, protect and fulfil citizens’ rights, including the right to food.
For urban governments, delivering the right to food is more challenging. To ensure the realisation of the right to food, a citizen, as a “rights holder”, needs to be able to demand the “duty bearer” (the state) to act to ensure the realisation of the right to food – that the right is respected, protected and fulfilled. A civic act of holding the state accountable.
However, the world today is largely urban. Africa is urbanising at a rapid pace, with many regions well over the 50 percent urbanised mark. Who then is the duty bearer responsible for the realisation of the right to food in urban areas in Africa? Food policy and governance in Africa still views food and food security, and as a result the mechanisms to achieve the right to food, as a rural endeavour. Most African urban governance actors have no direct food related policy, and as a result, no fiscal, mandate to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food.
The recent Committee on World Food Security High Level Panel of Experts in their recent publication “Strengthening urban and peri‐urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition, in the context of urbanization and rural transformation” made the essential connection, linking the right to food and the right to the city.
Lefebvre in his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville argued that citizens have a right to inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy in urban spaces. David Harvey frames the right to the city as “far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization.”
The right to food cannot serve those for whom the right is essential if reduced to a hollow, calorific measure, separated from many other rights, and basic needs.
This view asks new questions of how African cities engage and act on both the right to the city and the right to food.
Developing laws that demand the realisation of the right to food might offer some utility but runs the risk of reducing the right to a technical and legal process. This is insufficient and fundamentally misses the key drivers of food insecurity in African cities.
In recent work carried out by the urban food systems research cluster at the African Centre for Cities it is increasingly clear that attaining urban food and nutrition security demands understanding food and nutrition systems outcomes as embedded within wider and complex African urban systems. The Nourished Child Project noted how policies and processes associated with diverse systems, particularly the urban system, the health system, the social services system and the social system, were all essential to attaining food and nutrition security for children under five and their mothers. Equally, the Living Off Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration (LOGIC) found that infrastructure, and the reliability of that infrastructure, was the dominant factor that informed food purchases, the quality of foods accessed and the affordability of food.
These food system outcomes were not only informed by physical infrastructure. Social infrastructure was essential. Social infrastructure is often fragile, and like physical infrastructure, is in constant need of maintenance and repair. If acknowledged and respected, this social infrastructure represents “collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization”. These reflect a very different process. Such processes sit outside technical actions. Such infrastructures of care or infrastructures of nurture are essential elements of the urban everyday, often activated as a result of the absence of inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy.
The right to food cannot serve those for whom the right is essential if reduced to a hollow, calorific measure, separated from many other rights, and basic needs.
Most cities have a direct mandate to supply, service and maintain infrastructure. City governments thus have a mandate to act on and deliver many rights, specifically the right to water, the right to housing, and dignity. For this reason, despite no direct food mandate, the transversal nature of food, and the right to food, means that cities are responsible for the realisation of the right to food. For African urban governance actors respecting, protecting and fulfilling the right to food cannot be reduced to a focus on food alone. Food and respecting, protecting and fulfilling the right to food will only be achieved if food is seen as connected to many other mandates, mandates for which the city governments are responsible, and for which city governments have the tools to act. Carolyn Steel pointed out that the best way to understand a city is to look at it through food. A food lens offers useful insights into how African cities can respect, protect and fulfil the right to food, not as calorific sufficiency, and not as a technical legal process, but rather as a process of collectively making the city, with the primary focus on the most vulnerable, those most in need of the realisation of the right to food.