Food Vending: Adaptation under Difficult Circumstances

This paper presents both a descriptive and an analytical account of food vending activities by female heads of households in Masvingo, a provincial town in southern Zimbabwe, based on fieldwork conducted in 1994-1995. For the majority of the women, food vending was basically a ‘hanging on and coping’ strategy, offering very limited surplus for investment. Food vending allowed them merely to stay in town while maintaining a foot in their home village. The officially imposed constraints on food vending demonstrate the existence of competing and conflicting rationalities between male decisionmakers and poor women. The interconnections between food vendors and the formal markets are noted. Bibliogr., note, sum.