Why is food expensive in sub-Saharan African cities?

Consumer prices in high-income countries tend to be higher than in low-income countries, but this pattern does not hold for food prices in sub-Saharan Africa. While locally produced food crops tend to be cheaper in rural areas where at least part of the population are net-producers, high food prices are especially threatening the food and nutrition security of millions of African city-dwellers who rely on markets to procure their daily meals. This chapter sets out to disentangle the puzzle of high urban food prices, discussing the factors that influence food prices and showing how these are embedded in broader cost structures of sub-Saharan African economies. This chapter argues that deeper integration of markets in the context of a nascent intra-African trade union can help to lower food prices in the long run, but only when policymakers simultaneously address the excessive rents that exist in various value chains.