Ascertaining the effects of COVID-19 on food access, consumption and livelihoods coping strategies: creating more socially just food systems. A Case study of Mabvuku District, Harare

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation of these already marginalised urban households to access food. In addition, urbanites food systems are disrupted as they do not have sufficient land apart from their backyard garden to grow few food crops, hence not meeting their daily dietary requirements. The specific objectives of the study were to (1) determine the levels of food insecurity among urban households in Mabvuku district following the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) determine the different food consumption strategies adopted by urban dwellers to cope with food insecurity following the COVID-19 pandemic and (3) determine the different livelihood coping strategies adopted by Mabvuku urban dwellers following COVID-19. The study was carried out in Harare Metropolitan, with Mabvuku district being selected as the study site. Data was collected from informal street vendors in Mabvuku district, and households where food insecurity is high. For household sampling, the study focused on use a purposive sampling method. Assuming a 95% confidence level, 5% margin of error, target population of 30 000 and 50% estimated proportion, the minimum sample size required was 380 households. The results showed that that most of the households included in the study comprised 1 or 16 people. The average family size in this study constituted 5 individuals. Moreover, 50.03% of individuals in the households were employed by others, and 26.6% highlighted that they were unemployed. A minimum of 23.2% were self-employed. 81.6% of the respondents highlighted that the market where food can be sourced in very accessible, whilst 52.4% and 41.3% of the respondents highlighted that the prices of food products sold were very expensive and expensive respectively. Results show that majority 49.5% of the individuals household heads rely on salary for their family upkeep, 19.7% rely on small business they manage for their upkeep, 11.3% rely on casual labour for their source of livelihood. A minimum of 0.8% depend on pension and 6.1% depend on remittances for their source of livelihood. Thus, we can conclude that households mostly had socioeconomic difficulties following the COVID-19 pandemic. All the households surveyed never participated in safety nets programs, as well as not having access to supplementary feed for children. In addition, all the households reported not having participated in food emergence access activities. Majority of about 79.5% survey households noted that the market place to get food was very close to them but they could not buy everything they needed as the sold products were very expensive. 58.9% of the surveyed household acknowledged they did you worry that their household would not have enough food in a month and this happened often. Household Food Insecurity Assess Prevalence (HFIAP) was also used to assess the vulnerability of the household in relation to food access. Majority of the households were found with severe food insecurity issues during the COVID-19 lockdown period in terms of food access in the study area. The Survey data indicated that more than 74.6% of the households experienced food insecurity with 4.7% of the sampled households who were food secure from the sampled households in Mabvuku. R-squared was found to be 69% and the adjusted R-squared was 67%. This implies that the variables included in the model explain 69% of the variations in the model. Therefore, 31% of variations in the model are explained by exogenous factors. Since R-squared is above 50% the regression results are reliable and recommendations can be made basing on the results. Furthermore, the Darbin Watson value was found to be 2.3 which is above 2 meaning that the model was correctly specified. 37.5% of households limit food portions all the time and 23.3% fairly often. It was revealed in this study that more than 55% of respondents restricted food consumption by adults at least to a minimum of once and a maximum of six times a week. Many respondents 80% indicated that it was rare that people would stop some members of household from eating simply because they were not working. Results indicated that in 49.2% of households in Mabvuku, there are only two meals per day. Furthermore, the results indicate that 13.3% of households do so once in a while (1 to 2 times a week), with 80% never using the strategy and as evidently no one can use it all the time. Livelihood sources used for coping show that many households 49.2% and 24.2% respectively suffered from business activity reduction caused by the lockdowns. 58.3% of the respondents pointed out that they faced challenges with delayed income. Since many household do live from informal sectors with some going to work formally in Mabvuku, the study found that 70% of the respondents were greatly affected by not receiving remittances, as the pandemic affected also their family members abroad. It can be concluded that the residents in Mabvuku are food insecure thus there is need for social protection programmes to be put in place in order to cushion the urban residents of Zimbabwe. Key Words: Households, Food access, Food insecurity, COVID-19, Food Security.