Background: Rapid urbanization coupled with evolving threats from both communicable and non-communicable diseases underscore the vulnerability of urban healthcare systems. Building resilient healthcare systems and increasing access to socioeconomic resources is key for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). The city of Maputo (Mozambique) provides a helpful case study for the analysis of this situation. Methods: This investigation analyzes household survey data to determine the predictors of consistent household medical care access (SDG 3) in Maputo. Using those identified predictors, the study identifies key segments of households in Maputo that are vulnerable to disease given their inconsistent access to medical care. Results: The results indicate that households with inconsistent medical care access (SDG 3) also suffer from severe food insecurity (SDG 2) and inconsistent access to a cash income (SDG 8), water (SDG 6), and electricity (SDG 7). Conclusions: This study identifies challenges to the achievement of SDG 3 in Maputo, where households that are likely to need medical care under the strain of impoverished living conditions are also the least likely to have consistent access to needed medical care.

COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions regarding the extent to which households can access basic services and resources in cities around the world. Previous studies have indicated a predictive relationship between the consistency of resource access and food access among urban households. These investigations, however, have predominantly been isolated to Southern Africa and have not accounted for other dimensions of food security. To test whether these results are observable outside Southern Africa, and with a more multidimensional measure of food security, this investigation proposes a method for building an index of urban household food access, utilization and stability. The scores for the constructed index are then compared across household survey samples collected from five cities in the Global South. The investigation then assesses the predictive relationship between the consistency of household resource access and this more multidimensional index of food insecurity. While the general trend of inconsistent resource access predicting food insecurity is confirmed, there are geographic differences in the strength and quality of this relationship. These findings suggest that the resource access disruptions inflicted by COVID-19 will likely have a heterogeneous impact on urban food security dependent upon the affected resource and the city in which a given household resides.

In the original publication [...]

As an indicator of a potential broader nutrition transition, the supermarketization of urban food systems in the Global South has become a growing area of research interest. While the rising dominance of supermarkets in urban food systems has been noted in several global cities in the Global South, there have been fewer investigations into the spatial and demographic characteristics that may govern the patronage of supermarkets in smaller secondary cities. This paper assesses this supermarketization trend via an investigation of supermarket patronage in a secondary city through a 2014 household survey of Matola, Mozambique (n = 507). Using a combination of descriptive statistics and decision tree learning algorithms, the findings suggest a strong geographic pattern to supermarket patronage among the surveyed households in Matola. Further analyses comparing frequent and infrequent supermarket patrons confirms the observation that spatial distance may be a more significant determinant of supermarket patronage than household wealth among the surveyed households in Matola. These findings suggest that the spatial availability of supermarkets may play a greater role in defining the supermarketization of Matola’s food system than household entitlements. These findings also have implications for the evolving concept of urban food deserts in secondary cities, recognizing the role of spatial location in determining household access to supermarkets.

The study of urban food security has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. This evolution has been punctuated, and catalyzed, by insights into the dynamic transformation of food systems in cities. The evolution of this field, as revealed by its scholarly writings, provides an important vantage point for understanding both the dynamic transformation of the urban food system as well as the lens through which that transformation has been understood. This investigation adopted a bibliometric methodology, blending quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques, to assess the dynamic evolution of the literature over time. This methodology included a quantitative analysis of the metadata for 162 publications on urban food security. The results of this analysis provided an overview of research progress, historical and evolutionary trends, geographic disparities, keyword distribution, networks of collaboration, and key thematic foci. The quantitative analysis is complemented with a qualitative examination of top publications in the field. The results present a historical narrative of the evolution of urban food security research. In particular, the results indicate that the field has diversified its foci along key distinctions in food access and supply. The findings also identify common strategies and challenges inherent to the governance of urban food systems. In summary, this investigation provides a unique vantage point for discovering the evolution of urban food security and the perspectives that have defined that evolution.