Peri-Urban Livelihoods and Food Security

In the past decades, global challenges including food insecurity were viewed almost entirely as a rural phenomenon. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, rapid urbanization in the developing world has jeopardized livelihoods along the urban periphery leading to the gradual relocation of food insecurity closer to the urban areas. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore household livelihoods by focusing on livelihood constraints and coping strategies and to distinguish between food secure and insecure households. Mixed-methodology was employed whereby qualitative in-depth and semi-structured interviews were used to investigate household livelihoods, constraints and coping strategies while quantitative basic survey facilitated the distinction between food secure and insecure households. The findings revealed that more than half of households were food insecure and the general hindrance confronting the study area is the loss of farmlands for residential purposes. The drawn conclusions suggest that food insecurity issues are not only a rural phenomenon but ‘dwelling’ within urban fringes as well. Therefore, policy-makers and civil society need to address the reality of the problem to potentially alleviate the situation