By Ann Trevenen-Jones

Local and traditional food markets are a critical sustainability and resilience entry point, with multiple levers for locally led and contextualized food systems transformation that is inclusive and equitable. Prolifically spread throughout local communities and cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern and Southeast Asia, these markets are energized places where people, especially urban low-income and poor communities, as well as local and city governments connect with each other and the wider food system.

Crowded with the business of livelihoods, governance, social learning about food, and routines that reinforce community relationships, local and traditional urban food markets offer physically accessible and arguably more affordable sustenance and nutrition. Such markets pull and push food across rural and urban landscapes and territories and between formal and informal markets, wholesale markets, wholesalers within mixed retail markets, and kiosks. As vital distribution nodes within urban and peri-urban communities, market-sourced food is even accessible at household doorways via last-mile vendors.

However, these markets are also viewed as places of vulnerability and risk. They have a reputation as places of poverty, with inadequate food quality and hygiene and safety practices, lacking basic infrastructure and daily services such as access to potable water, sanitation, and cool rooms, and where healthy and unhealthy food is sold in many forms from fresh to processed and frozen. Furthermore, such markets and the vendors operating within them are viewed as having insufficient financial credibility and agency with respect to decision making and governance and therefore lacking in de-risking options.

The “world” intersects in wholesale and local and traditional markets. These markets at the local and territorial scale are places where consumers and local, regional, and global food systems engage on a daily basis and where multiple overlapping and complementary mandates assigned to departments within the city government, from finance and trade to water and sanitation and waste management, as well as higher levels of government such as the Department of Health, meet. Where decanted sunflower oil in alternative containers sit side by side plastic sealed packages of spices, sunlight bars of soap, factory processed biscuits, tea, sodas, dried fish, and fresh produce ranging from seasonal and Indigenous green vegetables, fruits, staples like arrow roots, cassava, rice, potatoes, wheat flour, and dried beans to fried sprouts and noodles, eggs, and live and frozen chicken. Where wholesale is like a mini roof-covered mall of abundance, with relatively large volumes of produce sold by “wholesalers,” compared to small-scale retail vendors’ offerings in the same market or separated by a few city streets. Where on select wholesale days, produce is sold out of trucks and on cloth laid out in temporary spaces in parking lots.

Two cases, from cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition’s (GAIN) Food Systems Governance programme has actively worked together with food market and city government stakeholders, illustrate the value of these markets as multi-sectoral entry points for locally led, contextualized food systems transformation, through governance. Both cases are from secondary (or intermediary) cities – Beira (Mozambique), located on the east coast of Africa, and Bogor (Indonesia), situated nearby Jakarta and surrounded by the wider rural Bogor regency area. Both cities, Beira for several years and Bogor more recently, are Milan Urban Food Policy Pact signatories, illustrating political commitment to food systems transformation and access to city-to-city best practices and learnings.

In Beira, following GAIN’s investment in market reconstruction and rehabilitation in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai and the COVID-19 pandemic, a multistakeholder market and city council management committee has operated for several years, strengthened by evidence and knowledge co-creation, food systems and nutrition capacitation, co-designed local policy tools with and for Beira City Council and public food markets, and a cost-benefit analysis of such market management models. This model involves city council, market, and consumer group representation and is scalable and can be localized further according to context. Food systems, and inclusion and equity principles, including gender, frame the committee’s mandate and operations. Additionally, vendor fees are reviewed with attention to what can be done by market committees and vendors themselves such as supporting reduction in food waste and monitoring toilets with regard to operational costs and maintenance.

Bogor, like the rest of Indonesia, has a plethora of wet and street vendor markets. Notably, street markets have a physical and virtual (digital platform) place and are a vital part of the city’s culinary tourism marketing. However, there are numerous challenges with street food markets. These range from food hygiene, safety and food waste to the lack of basic services like water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and vendor registration, to affordability and convenience of traditional healthy foods, and unhealthy food availability. Additionally, a 2024 study by the city government, found that almost all school students buy their food from street vendors, further raising their importance as a food system transformation entry point.

As part of supporting the Indonesian national government’s interpretation of food systems pathways into delivery, at the city level, GAIN is working with city government, street market associations, culinary centers, and cooperatives to inclusively co-design a pathways multi-stakeholder platform in Bogor. This is the first time the city and region have included street food vendors in such an initiative and paid attention to women street food vendors in the development of the Standard Operating Procedures of the Regional Action Plan for Food and Nutrition (2025-2029).

Food systems governance at the local or city and territorial levels is about the granularity of locally led, capacitated commitments, routine practices, and coherent intersection with multiple sectors and levels of government stakeholders. It’s less about “big P policy” and “big S solutions” for food systems pathways and more about what can be done in routine activities by many stakeholders – which is usually about making big strides with small, collective, and coherent effort and commitment.

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This article was funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. The findings, ideas, and conclusions presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of any of GAIN’s funding partners.

Dr Ann Trevenen-Jones leads the Food Systems Governance programme at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN).

The publication of this article was facilitated by the Governance and Policy Support Unit of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).