Issues in Brief, No. 11, December 2009

The Changing Shape of Malnutrition: Obesity in sub-Saharan Africa
By Arianna Fogelman

December 2009 (8 pages)
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This policy brief discusses the causes and consequences of over-nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting rural/urban connections, notions of personhood, and dietary conservatism as important factors in understanding and addressing the growing epidemic.

This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future or of Boston University.

Arianna Fogelman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University and was a 2009 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellow. She is currently conducting field research on the intersection

of local foodways and global processes in a fishing village in northern Mozambique. An expanded version of this paper received an Honorable Mention for the 2009 Christine Wilson Award from Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, a section of the American Anthropological Association.