Migration, rural�urban connectivity, and food remittances in Kenya
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MPDI
Abstract
This paper draws on data from a representative city-wide household food security survey of Nairobi conducted in 2017 to examine the importance of food remitting to households in
contemporary Nairobi. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the urbanization and
rapid growth of Nairobi, which has led to growing socio-economic inequality, precarious livelihoods
for the majority, and growing food insecurity, as context for the more detailed empirical analysis
of food security and food remittances that follows. It is followed by a description of the survey
methodology and sections analyzing the differences between migrant and non-migrant households
in Nairobi. Attention then turns to the phenomenon of food remitting, showing that over 50% of
surveyed households in the city had received food remittances in the previous year. The paper then
uses multivariate logistic regression to identify the relationship between Nairobi household characteristics and the probability of receiving food remittances from rural areas. The findings suggest
that there are exceptions to the standard migration and poverty-driven explanatory model of the
drivers of rural�urban food remitting and that greater attention should be paid to other motivations
for maintaining rural�urban connectivity in Africa.
Description
Keywords
Urban household, Migration, Food remittances, Food security, Kenya
Citation
Onyango, E. O. et al. (2021). Migration, rural�urban connectivity, and food remittances in Kenya. Environments , 8, 92. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments8090092