As we prepare for the 2025 Global Forum (13 – 17 October) marking ten years of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, we're bringing insights from our work across Africa and Asia on how city governments and local food markets can transform urban food environments and wider food systems.
Walking through any bustling urban food market, from Pemba (Mozambique) to Arusha (Tanzania) and Bogor (Indonesia), is a remarkable experience. Beyond the offerings of fresh, dried, iced and frozen produce, spices, cooked traditional meals, and animated negotiations between vendors and customers, the experience of the market is at the nexus of food systems and nutrition policies and daily realities. These markets are about more than selling and buying food; they are where the future of food systems, within cities and across urban–rural landscapes, borders, and territories, is being lived, innovated, and imagined.
Markets as Pathways to Better Nutrition
At the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), our work in Africa and Asia has shown us that local and traditional food markets function as vital mini-food environments that connect producers, and value chain businesses with an array of markets, last mile vendors and consumers. In these concentrated places of people and food, decisions play out in real time across both formal and informal systems in areas including:
● Governance
● Sustainable agriculture and fisheries
● Urban planning,
● Livelihoods and local economic development,
● Nutrition, food hygiene and safety, food waste, and
● Equity
Working through city governments and food markets, we help local leaders and communities to connect their health and prosperity with local and national policies and global commitments, like the Sustainable Development Goals. In this way, governments and market stakeholders work together to transform communities’ access to safe, healthy diets, while balancing the wider benefits and challenges for both people and the planet.
Every market, every vendor stall, every food tells its own story which you can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. A quick observation will tell you whether a city government has invested in water and sanitation infrastructure and basic service delivery, whether vendors have received food hygiene and safety training, whether market leaders are proactive agents of food systems transformation, whether women and smallholder farmers have pathways to markets and fair prices, and whether urban residents, especially low-income communities, have daily access to a diversity of affordable food choices and information to fuel their energy and nutritional needs so that they can thrive.
Five Critical Elements That Shape Markets
Five critical elements determine whether markets become hubs of nourishing pathways or barriers to sustainability, prosperous livelihoods, and affordable, safe, and healthy diets for all.
Governance shows up in how vendors are included, supported, regulated, and given a legitimate voice in decisions that affect their livelihoods. This takes many forms. Formal mechanisms include accessible vendor licenses, market committees, city government food focal points, multistakeholder platforms, dispute resolution processes and provision of micro-credit support. Inclusive practices ensure gender and youth mainstreaming.
Food security and nutrition is tangible in the diversity of sufficient, affordable, safe, quality food that is consistently available and accessible, while also taking cultural preferences into account. When markets, for example, sell fresh leafy green vegetables alongside cooked meals at prices even the most vulnerable people can afford, they shape positive nutrition outcomes for entire communities.
Food hygiene and safety manifests in infrastructure. Proper roofing, pitched and positioned correctly with climate-smart materials and air vents, provides a sheltered space for vendors and customers and protects food from spoiling due to weather. Flooring and drainage systems reduce food contamination and flooding. Reliable water access, sanitation structures, dry and cool storage, and raised food counters all help maintain food quality and safety. Infrastructure facilitates essential services, while vendor training ensures that good food handling practices can be implemented and that markets are safe and dignified spaces for all.
Equity becomes concrete through policies and practices that support women vendors, youth, informal workers, and small-scale farmers. This means ensuring they are part of shaping sustainable food systems and benefit from urban growth and diversification.
Connectivity is essential. City networks such as ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability and platforms like the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact provide spaces for exchange, inspiration, and shared learning. The second edition of the CityFood Market Handbook for Healthy and Resilient Cities, developed by ICLEI CityFood, GAIN, and the World Farmers Markets Coalition, will be released in October 2025. Alongside this, ICLEI CityFood and GAIN have built a community of practice where cities and experts exchange on topics ranging from governance and gender inclusion to food waste and nutrition. Together, the handbook, community of practice, and partnership connect diverse local realities with global commitments.
Our Work: From Bogor, Pemba, and Arusha to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Global Forum
In Bogor (Indonesia), we work with the city government and 13 street food vendor, culinary centres to strengthen inclusion and food safety by ensuring vendors have a place and a voice in shaping governance. For the first time, through the co-design of and operating procedures in Bogor’s 2025-2029 Regional Action Plan for Food and Nutrition, these vendors are considered partners in decisions that affect their livelihoods and the city’s nutrition outcomes.
Pemba’s (Mozambique) food markets are the meeting point of daily routines for long-time city residents and those displaced by conflict in the surrounding area. We are working alongside city government, market leaders and women vendor representatives, to turn these public food places into safer, more inclusive hubs where healthy communities can grow their present day prosperity and futures.
Our partnerships, in Arusha (Tanzania), with city and regional government leaders and the Kilombero Market committee are driving more inclusive governance. Women market vendors are stepping into leadership roles, and are a legitimate part of Arusha’s pathways platform. Together, these stakeholders are helping translate Tanzania’s national food systems pathway commitments into tangible local action.
Drawing on lessons from these pathways and GAIN’s city and market work in over eight countries, we are sharing at this year’s Global Forum how markets can become intentional pathways to healthier, more resilient, and sustainable urban food systems. Achieving this requires the right mix of governance, infrastructure, capacity-building, and partnerships.
Why This Approach Matters
City governments and local food markets are uniquely positioned to transform urban food security and nutrition outcomes. They are adaptable: a single investment in market roofing or WASH infrastructure or vendor food hygiene and/or business training can benefit thousands of people, in the city and beyond. They are inclusive when supported by robust policies and best practices, creating economic opportunities and influencing mechanisms for women, informal workers, and other vulnerable communities, while helping to reduce food insecurity and malnutrition. Most importantly, they are already embedded in the fabric of urban life, reflected in both public mandates and the daily routines of marketplaces.
Our work has shown that when we treat markets as nourishing pathways rather than just economic spaces, we unlock their potential to address multiple challenges and reach multiple co-benefits simultaneously. A market intervention focused on food security and nutrition can also advance gender equity, climate resilience, and economic inclusion.
Looking Forward
As representatives from cities and partner organisations gather in Milan to chart the next decade of urban food policy and strategies, we are excited to learn, connect and share what we have learned about creating nourishing pathways through intermediary, Milan Urban Food Policy Pact signatory cities and food markets in Africa and Asia.
The transformation of urban food systems will happen in markets: one vendor, one customer, one policy change at a time. Our role is to co-facilitate the enabling environment for just, locally led change to happen.
Across the world, in low, middle and high-income countries, in small towns, large and mega-cities, city governments are acting, the markets are ready. The question is: are we ready to see them for what they can become? Intentional and inclusive pathways to nourishment and resilience in our rapidly urbanizing world.
Find out more about GAIN and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact’s 2025 Global Forum: Read here
Interested in learning more about GAIN’s city and market investment? Read here
Overhead view of Buguruni Market, Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) showing roofed area, solar energy panel, vendors operating outside the market and transporter delivering bananas.© GAIN 2024
More than 2600 vendors operate in this market which received an estimated 70,000 consumers visit daily.