African Geographical Review 

About: African Geographical Review is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Agriculture & Land use. It has an ISSN identifier of 1937-6812. Over the lifetime, 379 publications have been published receiving 3389 citations.

Implications of supermarket expansion on urban food security in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract: The rapid rise in supermarkets in developing countries over the last several decades resulted in radical transformations of food retail systems. In Cape Town, supermarket expansion has coincided with rapid urbanization and food insecurity. In this context, retail modernization has become a powerful market-driven process impacting food access for the poor. The introduction of formal food retail formats is viewed simultaneously as a driver of food accessibility and as a detriment to informal food economies established in lower income neighborhoods. Through a mixed-methods approach, this article assesses the spatial distribution of supermarkets within Cape Town and whether this geography of food retail combats or perpetuates food insecurity, particularly in lower income neighborhoods. Spatial analysis using geographic information systems at a city-wide scale is combined with a qualitative case study utilizing semi-structured interviews and observational analysis in the Philippi township in order to illuminat...

A New Map of Standardized Terrestrial Ecosystems of Africa

Abstract: Terrestrial ecosystems and vegetation of Africa were classified and mapped as part of a larger effort and global protocol (GEOSS – the Global Earth Observation System of Systems), which includes an activity to map terrestrial ecosystems of the earth in a standardized, robust, and practical manner, and at the finest possible spatial resolution. To model the potential distribution of ecosystems, new continental datasets for several key physical environment datalayers (including coastline, landforms, surficial lithology, and bioclimates) were developed at spatial and classification resolutions finer than existing similar datalayers. A hierarchical vegetation classification was developed by African ecosystem scientists and vegetation geographers, who also provided sample locations of the newly classified vegetation units. The vegetation types and ecosystems were then mapped across the continent using a classification and regression tree (CART) inductive model, which predicted the potential distribution of vegetation types from a suite of biophysical environmental attributes including bioclimate region, biogeographic region, surficial lithology, landform, elevation and land cover. Multi-scale ecosystems were classified and mapped in an increasingly detailed hierarchical framework using vegetation-based concepts of class, subclass, formation, division, and macrogroup levels. The finest vegetation units (macrogroups) classified and mapped in this effort are defined using diagnostic plant species and diagnostic growth forms that reflect biogeographic differences in composition and sub-continental to regional differences in mesoclimate, geology, substrates, hydrology, and disturbance regimes (FGDC, 2008). The macrogroups are regarded as meso-scale (100s to 10,000s of hectares) ecosystems. A total of 126 macrogroup types were mapped, each with multiple, repeating occurrences on the landscape. The modeling effort was implemented at a base spatial resolution of 90 m. In addition to creating several rich, new continent-wide biophysical datalayers describing African vegetation and ecosystems, our intention was to explore feasible approaches to rapidly moving this type of standardized, continent-wide, ecosystem classification and mapping effort forward. In 2005, a consortium of nations, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), convened and created the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). GEOSS is an intergovernmental protocol aimed at promoting and facilitating the use of earth observations, both in-situ and remotely-sensed, for societal benefit. GEOSS is programmatically organized into nine societal benefit areas (ecosystems, biodiversity, weather, disasters, health, water, energy, climate, and agriculture). The ecosystems societal benefit area includes a task (EC-01-C1) to develop a standardized, robust, and practical classification and map of global ecosystems (Sayre et al., 2007). This task is currently described in the GEOSS 2012-2015 work plan.1 It was originally commissioned in the initial framework GEOSS ten year work plan.2 The methodology for producing these standardized terrestrial ecosystems has previously been implemented for South America (Sayre et al., 2008) and the United States (Sayre et al., 2009) and was adapted for Africa as described below. Numerous ecological regionalizations of Africa exist. Notable among them are the biogeographical provinces of Udvardy (1975), the pioneering work of Frank White (1983) to map phytochorological regions (based on the number of endemic species), the phytogeographic maps (floristic regions) of Takhtajan (1986), and more recently the terrestrial ecoregions of Bailey (1998) and the World Wildlife Fund (Burgess et al., 2004). These interpretive efforts, drawing extensively upon expert knowledge and intuitive boundary demarcation, have considerably advanced the understanding of African ecogeography. A potential vegetation map extending White’s (1983) chorological emphasis in greater detail across seven east African countries has been produced as part of a seven volume monograph series and atlas (Lillesø et al., 2011). Remote sensing-derived maps of regional and global land cover such as those from the Africover (FAO, 1997), Global Land Cover 2000 (Mayaux et al., 2006) and the GlobCover 2005 (Bicheron at al., 2006) products have similarly provided increasingly quantitative and finer spatial resolution characterizations of vegetation cover for A New Map of Standardized Terrestrial Ecosystems of Africa A Special Supplement to the African Geographical Review 5 Africa. The work described herein represents a new effort to model African ecosystem distributions across the entire continent at a 90m base resolution using physical environment data and geospatial statistics.

Brand Aid: shopping well to save the world

Abstract: ing and unacceptable inequities of this metropolis. Yet rather like ascribing Cape Town’s problems of a previous dispensation to ‘racism,’ I was predisposed to find the term ‘neoliberalism’ too protean, too vague to have much analytical merit. However, in his conclusion, especially in its final nine pages, Samara provides a clear, five-faceted elucidation of what he is prepared to see as a punitive neoliberalism. What was once a colonial city became an apartheid city and then, we had hoped, a liberated city? It didn’t pan out. Instead, the transition from a city underdeveloped by apartheid to one underdeveloped by neoliberalism appears in his opinion to be almost seamless. He makes the most cogent point that after electoral democracy was established in 1994, whichever the political party in power – be it the ex-apartheid, revamped New National Party, or the liberal Democratic Alliance/Party, or the African National Congress – the neoliberal agenda of securitisation remained the same. The central city is polished up, and its fortified boundaries are to be defended against the Cape Flats. The current spatial language of the metropolis, Samara alleges powerfully, is one ‘that rearticulates the apartheid-era geography of inside/safety and outside/danger’ (p. 182). A very good book – but from the author’s description, the metropolitan situation comes across as wretched.

Interrogating the technocratic (neoliberal) agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa

Abstract: This paper introduces a special issue that critically examines the dominant technocratic, neoliberal agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa. We briefly review the history of African agricultural and food security policy in the post-colonial period in order to contextualise the productionist approach embedded in the New Green Revolution for Africa, a strategy comprising the use of hybrid seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to boost crop production. This approach is underpinned by a new and unprecedented level of public–private partnerships as donors actively work to promote the private sector and build links between African farmers, input suppliers, agro-dealers, agro-processors, and retailers. On the consumer end, increased supermarket penetration into poorer neighbourhoods is proffered as a solution to urban food insecurity. The papers in the special issue complicate understandings of this new approach and raise serious questions about its effectiveness as a strategy for incr...

‘Abandoning’ farms in search of food: food remittance and household food security in Ghana

Abstract: This paper examines the important place of food remittances in the context of household food security in the Upper West Region (UWR) of Ghana against a backdrop of rapid environmental change and accelerating rural poverty. Findings from in-depth interviews conducted in the UWR show a tendency toward increased dependence of rural poor families on food remittance as a strategy for coping with chronic household food insecurity amidst poverty, changing patterns of rainfall and declining soil fertility. In addition, the study also shows that while food remittance entailed spatial dispersion of the household in a context where certain household members migrate to distant agricultural-rich hinterlands, engage in migrant farming and remit agricultural produce back home, the strategy nonetheless leads to the strengthening of familial and kinship ties. The study concludes by making relevant policy recommendations that would improve household livelihood security.