ABSTRACT
Using the lens of food systems, this study investigates the ‘everyday’ in Zambia’s largest urban food market, with the goal of better understanding the formal-informal continuum and thus grounding policy to support more inclusive and sustainable urban development in the global South. Examining interactions by and with food actors, the study found that relations and systems were marked by creative and often manipulative interpretations of formal regulations and laws, resulting in both exclusion and inclusion. Using co-production research methodologies, urban market governance was revealed to be a contested sociopolitical mosaic of formal and informal actors and systems, structured by ‘multiple sites’ of power and control. This reality points to the workings of a society operating in the absence of a democratically functioning state, and also contributes to a context that resists the establishment of SSE (social solidarity economies). The study concludes that urban governance in African cities is highly fragmented and fluid, and contests the assumptions that underlie northern debates on urban governance, a finding that must be considered when designing conceptual and policy innovations intended to transform African urban spaces.
