We examine the implications of the rise of a middle class in East and Southern Africa for food consumption patterns and the food system. A unique classification of food items shows that highly processed food has one-third of the purchased food market, with comparable shares in rural and urban...

A revolution in food systems — food supply chains upstream from farms, to the food industry in the midstream segments of processing and wholesale and in the downstream segment of retail, then on to consumers — has been under way in the United States for more than a century and in developing...