Special Issues
Climate Change, Mobility, and Food Systems in Africa: Intersections, Vulnerabilities, and Pathways to Resilience
Jonathan Crush, Mulugeta Dinbabo
African Journal of Governance and Development 2025, 14(1.2).
The papers in this Special Issue cover a range of geographies, themes, and methods, but converge on a shared insight: that climate change is profoundly shaping food systems, forms of human mobility, and household food security. Across the African continent, accelerating climate change is transforming weather patterns, intensifying extreme weather events, creating urban heat islands, and eroding land and water resources. These shifts are reinforcing existing inequalities and socio-economic divides, affecting where people live, how they access food, and the types of mobility and immobility they engage in. Doomsday scenarios about climate catastrophe, famine, and mass migration have increasingly given way to more nuanced views in which both the capacity to move and the factors that constrain movement are seen as livelihood strategies for resilience and adaptation. While climate change and food insecurity are increasingly recognised as drivers of internal and international migration, migration is a key strategy that redistributes risk and resources and can mitigate food insecurity. Therefore, the analysis of climate change and food insecurity as migration drivers needs to be leavened with the lived experiences, responses, and strategies of those most affected. These case studies converge on a shared insight: that is, climate change is profoundly shaping food systems, forms of human mobility, and household food security.
This Special Issue seeks to enhance our understanding of the nexus between migration and food security in urban Africa in at least three ways: first, it examines how COVID-19 impacted migrant populations in African cities by bringing together a selection of the latest research that centers the experiences of migrants before, during, and after the pandemic. Second, given that more and more refugees in Africa are city-based, it looks at how urban refugees pursue a living outside refugee encampments and with what consequences for building food security. And third, it focuses on the links between food security and the participation of migrants in the informal food sector. As a grouping, the papers seek to transcend the simplistic depiction of migrants as passive victims of the pandemic and instead emphasizes their role as active participants in urban food systems, whether as traders, remittance senders, or informal workers. At the same time, the papers draw attention to the structural barriers that continue to limit migrants’ agency.