On 18 July 2026, we held a workshop entitled ‘Improving food and digital access for the Sudanese community in Birmingham’.

On 18 July 2026, we held a workshop entitled ‘Improving food and digital access for the Sudanese community in Birmingham’. The aim of the workshop was to bring together members of the Sudanese community in Birmingham with members from the council and other service providers, to increase awareness of barriers faced by Sudanese in food and digital access, and to identify practical strategies to improve engagement.

Participants included researchers from SOAS (Susanne Jaspars and Yasmin Houamed), council staff working on food systems, a representative from the food justice network and women and men representing different Sudanese community groups, some who had lived in Birmingham for decades and some who had arrived more recently. The workshop also included two Sudanese facilitators and two translators.

In the first half, Yasmin presented findings from our UK research on the effects of digitalising food assistance, followed by facilitated discussion on barriers to engagement. In the second half, Susanne shared findings of the Sudan research highlighting the key role of the diaspora, again followed by discussion. This briefing note (downloadable below) summarises the presentations followed by the key points that came up in discussion, based on specified discussion questions.

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