About the Project

‘Digitalising Food Assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide’ is a major 3-year ESRC- funded project examining how digitalising food assistance has influenced access to food for marginalised populations and its role as a source of power.  We’re working in Sudan, India and the UK, and are situated in the SOAS Food Studies Centre.

Food insecurity is a growing global issue, with increasing numbers of people experiencing humanitarian crisis or precarious livelihoods.  To tackle this problem, governments, businesses, and aid organisations are promoting various digital solutions to enhance food security. However, there is limited understanding of how effective these digital practices truly are. The digital tools we will explore include mobile phones, digital platforms, smart cards, banking and vouchers, biometrics, and artificial intelligence. These tools are used in cash transfers, market support, and agricultural assistance.  From a food security perspective, it is crucial to examine the risk of exclusion and power dynamics.

Our project will carefully examine effects of digitalising food assistance, paying close attention to marginalised populations, such as migrants and displaced individuals, who may be at risk of exclusion because of limited connectivity, digital skills and the need for national ID cards. We will also examine power relations, as digital practices can involve  surveillance and control, and private sector involvement may prioritize profit over people’s well-being.

‘Digitalising food assistance’ aims to understand how the digitalisation of food assistance has influenced vulnerability to food security, its role as a source of power and way of governing, and to examine implications for addressing hunger, locally and globally.   To do this, we will:

• Map different digital food assistance practices and the motivations for adopting them.
• Investigate how digital practices relate to welfare, production, trade, finance, and their implications for power dynamics, inequality, and profit.
• Explore the effects of digitalised food assistance on marginalised populations, with particular emphasis on migrants and displaced people.
• Influence policy and practice using evidence on the effect of digital technologies.
• Promote equitable research partnerships through joint leadership by researchers from the Global North and South.

‘Digitalising food assistance’ is a collaborative project with joint leadership shared between institutions in Sudan, India and the UK.

We have selected these case study countries to reflect the range of digital food assistance practices used globally, and the contrasting political economy, governance and food security environments in which they are operationalised across the Global North and South.

The project is led by Dr Susanne Jaspars, the Principle Investigator, at the SOAS Food Studies Centre, together with Dr C. Sathyamala, as Co-Investigator at the Institute for Human Development in New Delhi (India), and Co-Investigator Dr Tamer Abd Elkreem, at the University of Khartoum supported by CEDEJ-Khartoum (the French Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies in Sudan). Dr Iris Lim, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, will lead on the UK part of the research .

We will work closely with local NGOs and charities on stakeholder engagement and dissemination.  These partners include the Darfur Development and Reconstruction Agency (DDRA) in Sudan, Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) in India, and the Food Foundation in the UK. This collaboration brings together academic and policy networks, combining expertise in food, politics, social welfare, migration, development, and aid.

We will produce a range of outputs that contribute to both academic scholarship and policy development in the field of food assistance, including not only working papers, policy reports and journal articles, but also blogs, opinion pieces, podcasts and a photo series.