Paper short abstract:

Studying drivers of healthy diets in African cities offers a lens to explore systems that affect wellbeing. Many forms of governance are already influencing food environments. There is potential for city level governance to improve access to healthy diets and therefore wellbeing in African cities.

Paper long abstract:

There is increased focus on the importance of food system governance for shaping health, wellbeing and nutrition in urban Africa. Healthy diets are known to be closely connected to wellbeing, and dependent on and influenced by a number of urban systems and structural drivers. However, there remain gaps in understanding effective food system governance at the city level. This presentation argues that focusing on the drivers of healthy diets can provide a lens through which to explore the governance systems, and their complex intersections, that affect healthy diets at a city level. We review the ways that different urban systems influence access to, and affordability of, healthy food. We identify many forms of governance in African cities that are already acting to influence and improve food environments, especially for children and low income groups, including education, food retail and infrastructure, even when healthy diets are not explicitly part of these systems’ mandates. Therefore, while local governments may consider themselves under-capacitated to deal with the structural issues affecting access to healthy diets, there are many ways in which they are already doing so. This highlights the scope and potential role for city level governance to act to improve access to healthy diets and therefore wellbeing in African cities, through locating responsibilities in existing spaces of urban governance. These processes should be recognised and further leveraged for their ongoing contribution to health, wellbeing and nutrition in African urban contexts. Healthy diets may, therefore, offer an organising concept for urban reform.