Podcast Summary: Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in African Studies
Guest: Dr. Devin Smart
Host: Ifoa Benfikwashi
Date: September 21, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Ifoa Benfikwashi interviews Dr. Devin Smart about his new book, Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya's Port City. The conversation explores the transformation of food systems in Mombasa, Kenya, as they intersect with the evolution of capitalism, labor, urbanization, and migration during the 20th century. Dr. Smart traces the journey from rural subsistence foodways to modern urban markets, focusing on the emergence and resilience of the street food industry. The episode also delves into gender roles, daily routines, political contradictions, and the broader implications for African and global urban history.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Dr. Devin Smart’s Background and Academic Journey

• Grew up in Seattle; discovered African history as an undergraduate due to university courses not available in earlier schooling (02:05).
• Initially interested in the Great Lakes region but shifted focus to Kenya for practical language reasons—documents in English (03:30).
• Fieldwork, including living in Mombasa and Swahili language studies, shaped his personal and scholarly engagement with Kenya (05:00).
• “I'm probably first a historian of capitalism and labor ... but I'm also trying to work through that in the context of food studies.” (06:29)

2. Main Themes of the Book: Food, Capitalism, and Urbanization

• The book connects global transformation under capitalism to daily lived experiences by focusing on food systems (07:38).
• Central Question: “How does the transition from rural, subsistence-based food production to market dependency unfold for working-class people?” (07:52)
• Blend of global and local history methodologies—grounded in Mombasa with implications for urban and migration studies worldwide (11:17).
• “It's both a local and a global history ... anyone working on migration, urbanization, the transition to capitalism, and other societies can find insights.” (11:50)

3. Rural Foodways and the Urban Transition

• Pre-urban migration, rural communities were largely subsistence-based, producing and processing their own (mostly plant-based) food.
• Gendered labor: Men cleared fields, but women took charge of growing, harvesting, processing, and preparing food (15:00).
• Exception among the Luo, for whom fish was a dietary staple (18:26).
• Migration to Mombasa involved bringing rural values, expectations, and culinary tastes into the urban economy (13:35).
• “Even if they're in cities ... these are effectively rural people from agrarian societies living in cities and their worldview ... shaped by those experiences.” (13:50)

4. The Posho System and the Shock of Monotony

• Early urban employment (c. 1900–1930s): Employers provided “posho” (food rations), mostly monotonous maize meal, as part of wages (20:45).
• The switch from diverse rural diets to a daily repetition of maize created discontent, organizing, and labor turnover (25:00).
• “It's this new monotony and uniformity of the diet that is a radical new experience ... very quickly it becomes a point of tension.” (24:37)

Notable Quote:

“The thing they're advocating for... isn't necessarily more food, but more variety in their diet. If you’re going to give me a huge mass of maize meal, I need some fish with it, I need some vegetables, maybe some meat, some more salt...” — Devin Smart (24:25)

5. Commercialization, Street Food, and Urban Daily Life

• By the late 1930s and 1940s, cash replaced rations; workers bought food from an expanding network of grocers (maduka) and fresh produce, meat, and fish vendors (29:32).
• Rapid urban growth and spatial expansion spurred the proliferation of street food vendors (32:00).
• Street food responded to:
  • Workers’ inability to return home midday (due to long hours/distance).
  • Demand for fast, filling meals (port workers, railway workers, manufacturing laborers) (34:10).
• Street food became essential for urban capitalism’s logistics and labor rhythm (36:10).

Notable Quote:

"Street food vendors ... become essential to the daily reproduction of the working day, because if they're not providing those calories ... the whole system slows down." — Devin Smart (36:35)

6. Gender, Space, and Routines

• Cooking duties in cities shifted: Many all-male boarding houses led men to cook for themselves—unlike rural settings, where women dominated food prep (38:03, 40:00).
• Breakfast options included at-home bread and chai, or buying Mahamri and tea from Gharia Chai (tea carts), often run by men but supplied by women (41:30).
• Lunch: Main meal purchased from street-side vibanda (sheds/diners), usually cooked by women (44:10).
• Dinner: Men might share cooking chores at home or pick up supplemental items (fried fish, ugali) from vendors (48:44).
• Emergence of a flexible, hybridized system: “There's a whole bunch of combinations of people preparing their own food, eating out regularly...” (52:33)

7. Contradictions and Politics of Street Food

• Colonial & postcolonial governments ambivalent: Needed informal street food for economic functioning, yet sought to “modernize” and regulate via hygiene, licensing, and clearing campaigns (55:59).
• Street food’s affordability depended on informality: “...keeping their overhead extremely low ... allows poor working-class people to actually afford to eat there.” (58:10)
• Institutional attempts at creating municipal canteens never matched actual demand—street food persisted (61:30).
• Worker protest protected the industry: “Port employers basically went to the city and said, you can't shut down these street food vendors—they are supplying food to our workers.” (63:18)
• The contradiction remains unresolved, creating chronic tension between city goals and everyday realities (64:55).

8. Diversification and Resilience in Changing Times

• Post-independence: Mombasa’s economy diversified—tourism, manufacturing, and peri-urban growth shifted working-class geographies (66:42).
• Institutional feeding (canteens, hotel staff meals) returns for some workers, but street food remained crucial for taxi drivers, curio sellers, and those outside formal employment (68:45).
• Despite periodic crackdowns (e.g., cholera panic in the 1970s), the industry continually rebounded due to necessity and lack of alternatives (74:55, 78:20).

Notable Quote:

"People talked about using the income they earned to buy rural land, pay school fees ... really concrete ways that doing this business improved their lives. But at the same time ... that industry from the kind of postwar era onward just has this inherent instability built into it." — Devin Smart (72:57)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “It's as effective a tool as any for trying to get our heads around what those [economic and social] dynamics actually were.” — Devin Smart [08:30]
• “Even in the city, it is still a gendered division of labor, but necessity also leads to men preparing their own food for the first time on a significant scale.” — Devin Smart [38:45]
• “It’s about the transition from routine, seasonal variety to industrial monotony—in the food on your plate every day.” — Devin Smart [21:48]
• “There is a contradictory politics ... even until today, has not been fully resolved within Mombasa, but I think globally, where there are large informal economies.” — Devin Smart [55:59]
• “The street food industry comes back... but that’s obviously a jarring experience for people working in the industry for days, weeks, months at a time, they can’t get the income they need.” — Devin Smart [76:44]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:20 – Introduction of Dr. Devin Smart and his background
• 07:38 – Book's central questions: capitalism, migration, food systems
• 13:35 – Rural foodways and migration to Mombasa
• 20:45 – The posho system: uniform rations and worker pushback
• 29:32 – Commercialization and rise of street food; transformation of daily life
• 38:03 – Gender and changing food preparation roles in the city
• 55:59 – Contradictory politics: regulation vs. necessity of street food
• 66:42 – Diversification of Mombasa’s food and economic landscape; resilience of street food
• 72:57 – The lived experience of street food vendors: precarity, resilience, and pride

Conclusion and Looking Forward

• Dr. Smart highlights the adaptability, resilience, and centrality of street food in the lives of Mombasa’s working poor, and its persistent tensions with “modernization” and regulation.
• The book offers a model for understanding the intimate, practical effects of capitalism through food—revealing both the hardships and creative agency of urban Africans over the past century.
• Dr. Smart’s next project turns to the environmental and economic history of Kenyan fisheries—seeing parallels between food, extraction, and modernization (79:51).

For anyone interested in food, urban history, migration, and African studies, this episode provides a fascinating, accessible, and deeply human window into the making of modern Mombasa—one meal at a time.