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Catalyzing change and promoting sustainable cities in informal settlements and their residents requires an understanding of unmet needs and resilience among marginalized and vulnerable groups (MVGs). This is because needs identified on behalf of MVGs as "unmet" are sometimes not perceived as unmet, or even "meetable", and resilience strategies from above are often perceived as unsuitable by the MVGs. To the best of our knowledge, no study has used governance diaries to identify the unmet needs and resilience strategies of MVGs from their perspectives. As such, this study explored the unmet needs and resilience strategies of MVGs in informal settlements using governance diaries. This was a qualitative study using governance diaries with 24 participants from two informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. We used Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the framework analysis. We identified unmet needs related to physiology, safety, love and belonging, and self-esteem, in the order of the hierarchy. MVGs did not need the full satisfaction of a lower need to yearn for a higher one, and continue living despite their unmet needs. However, there were no self-actualization needs as the participants could not satisfy the lower level needs. The urban paradox reminds us that cities are not always beneficial for all. There is a continued need for holistic approaches to uncover the often hidden resilience strategies for achieving unmet needs. Our study identified behavioural and cognitive resilience strategies. As such, actors need to embrace and build on local resilience strategies in efforts to address the unmet needs of MVGs in pursuit of inclusive urbanization in Africa. The identification of unmet needs and resilience strategies adds to the literature, policy and practice on how and why residents and MVGs continue working and living in informal settlements despite a lack of or inadequate basic amenities. Our study findings imply that actors in informal settlements need to build on and re-build local resilience strategies in pursuit of inclusive and liveable urbanization in Africa, as unmet needs tend to increase with worsened marginality and vulnerability status. Beyond the resilience strategies adopted by MVGs, governments, service providers and caregivers should take more useful actions to prevent or reduce unmet needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food environments that people have access to shape their food choices. The purpose of this study was to use mixed methods to characterize the external food environment in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya and to examine the individual factors that influence the way in which women interact with those environments to make food choices. We used a combination of food environment assessments (vendor mapping, collection of food prices, food quality assessments) and five focus group discussions with women (n = 26) in four villages within two informal settlements in Nairobi (Mukuru and Kibera) to better understand the drivers of food choice. We found a large number (n = 1163) of vendors selling a variety of food within the settlements. The highest number of vendors were selling fruits and/or vegetables; however, there was limited diversity of fruits available. Animal-source foods were considered relatively expensive as compared to plant-based foods, including prepared fried snacks. We found that the way women interacted with their food environments was influenced by individual factors such as income, time, convenience, and preferences. Our findings suggest that interventions targeting both the external food environment as well as individual factors such as income will be necessary to support healthy diets among low-income populations living in informal settlements in Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to disclose the social factors of sustainable development goals by exploring the links between three types of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking) and food security in Kibera, an informal settlement located in Nairobi, Kenya. Several studies in the literature have addressed links between food security and social capital. However, a lack of theoretical approaches exist in the literature, which concern the sustainable development theory devoted to urban areas taking into account the sustainable development goals. This study applies a linear regression model on data from 385 households in Kibera to analyze the connection between food security and three types of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking). The results demonstrate that there is a positive impact between our proxies for bonding social capital (cultural diversity and the number of visits to area of origin) and food security. Bridging social capital (measured by trust in strangers) demonstrated a negative impact on food security. Finally, one indicator for linking social capital demonstrated a positive impact on food security (trust in community leaders), whereas the statistical analyses did not find any relationship of the two indicators; 'trust in local politicians' and 'membership of social organisations', with food security. The results demonstrate that insight into social capital can inform the understanding of household food insecurity in vulnerable urban settlements, by illustrating the critical impacts of social drivers in a food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal settlements in rapidly-growing African cities are urban and peri-urban spaces with high rates of formal unemployment, poverty, poor health outcomes, limited service provision, and chronic food insecurity. Traditional concepts of food deserts developed to describe North American and European cities do not accurately capture the realities of food inaccessibility in Africa's urban informal food deserts. This paper focuses on a case study of informal settlements in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, to shed further light on the relationship between informality and food deserts in African cities. The data for the paper was collected in a 2016 survey and uses a sub-sample of households living in shack housing in three informal settlements in the city. Using various standard measures, the paper reveals that the informal settlements are spaces of extremely high food insecurity. They are not, however, food deprived. The proximity of supermarkets and open markets, and a vibrant informal food sector, all make food available. The problem is one of accessibility. Households are unable to access food in sufficient quantity, quality, variety, and with sufficient regularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]