Understanding urban food provisioning in West Africa and its effects on urban food system sustainability

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West Africa’s rapid urban growth is fundamentally changing food systems, resulting in a growing urban demand for food, a stronger reliance on marketed food, and changing diets. These changes widen the spatial gap between food consumption and production and influence the ways in which food reaches cities. However, very little is known about where cities in West Africa get their food from and which factors govern food supply and distribution patterns. Previous research under the UrbanFoodPlus project has allowed the collection of empirical data from 2013 to 2017 on urban food flows in four West African cities for different seasons but does not provide information on the causes for and effects of these flows on food systems. By moving beyond descriptive case studies, this project aims at assessing the underlying mechanisms for current food supply and distribution patterns and their effects on urban food system sustainability. The proposed research has three key objectives: First, it aims at identifying factors explaining food supply patterns and at up-scaling general patterns to other urban centres in the sub-region. Second, it will assess the impact of the current food supply regime on urban food system sustainability and resilience. Third, the study will assess existing policies on West African food systems and contribute to the formulation of policy recommendations taking into consideration future scenarios. The Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) will support the implementation of objectives 1 and 2, while objective 3 will be handled at the SWAC (The Sahel and West Africa Club) (Paris, France). The proposed project will employ statistical and spatial analysis methods and take a system perspective. It will consider urban food systems and their activities from production to consumption, as well as their (telecoupled) interactions with other systems. It will bridge different spatial scales, and link science with policy. As such, it will contribute to enhancing our understanding of urban food systems in West Africa, a region, where data scarcity is a major problem.