Urban Consumption Patterns of Livestock Products in Zambia and Implications for Policy

Rapid urbanization in Zambia means that increasingly heavy demands are being placed on urban food marketing systems. Investment in these systems has been woefully inadequate for many decades, creating supply bottlenecks and health hazards that work against the interests of both farmers and consumers. Understanding urban food expenditure patterns is a first step in addressing these problems. The Food Security Research Project (FSRP) which is now the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) has conducted considerable work on urban consumption patterns of stables and fresh produce as part of on-going research and outreach work in the respective value chains1. However, no work has yet been done on livestock products and thus this study seeks to understand urban consumption and purchasing patterns of livestock products and how these vary by income level and across key cities of the country.