Patterns and determinants of multidimensional poverty in secondary cities: Implications for urban sustainability in African cities

Urban poverty research on African cities has focused mainly on megacities and large metropolitan areas. Despite their critical role in Africa's urbanization and development, secondary cities have received limited scholarly attention. Studies on secondary cities are unidimensional and rely mostly on secondary information from na-tional census data. Using Wa, a secondary city in Ghana, this study assesses spatial patterns and determinants of multidimensional poverty, measured by two metrics: multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and multidimen-sional energy poverty index (MEPI). Spatially explicit primary data were collected from 775 households differentiated into core and fringe neighbourhoods. Mean MPI was significantly lower in core neighbourhoods than in fringe neighbourhoods. However, we found no statistically significant difference in MEPI between core and fringe neighbourhoods. The distribution of MPI is variably influenced by location and space but not MEPI. Although MPI was generally low, most areas with low MPI still had high MEPI, suggesting that energy access may be major problem even in secondary cities with low poverty. MPI was largely influenced negatively by household size and education. There was a significant negative relationship between MEPI and the food consumption score, suggesting a strong inverse relationship between food security and energy poverty. Together, the findings imply that scaling up the adoption of clean cooking energy in secondary cities can play a key role in addressing multidimensional urban poverty and advancing urban sustainability.