Food security in Tanzania: the challenge of rapid urbanisation

Urbanisation in Tanzania is proceeding apace. This article seeks to identify the challenge posed by rapid urbanisation for food security in Tanzania to 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals horizon. It is hypothesized that urban food security largely depends on the food supply systems and the rural food production potential. The analysis of these interlinkages is based on secondary macro data and own primary micro data. Tanzania has done well to achieve broad self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs to date, but rapid urbanisation will pose a severe future challenge as regards food security, particularly for the disadvantaged poorer people of the towns and cities in terms of food affordability, stability and food safety. Whether Tanzania can avoid future deterioration in urban food security will depend on how responsive and resilient the urban food supply systems prove to be in the face of continuing urban growth, changing consumption patterns, weak rural-urban food supply linkages and production constraints in the smallholder farming sector.