Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance, and food security effects across the Global North-South divide

Food insecurity is rising globally and increasing numbers of people experience humanitarian crisis or precarious livelihoods. These trends have accelerated with the 2008 global food crisis and the global pandemic, and are likely to do so again in the current global food crisis compounded by the war in Ukraine. Over the same period, governments, businesses, and aid organisations have promoted a range of digital practices to address food insecurity, including mobile phones, smart cards and banking, to transfer money, biometrics for identification, artificial intelligence to predict and categorise need, and digital platforms for market and agricultural support. There are, however, risks of exclusion, due to limited connectivity, digital skills, and need for national ID cards, which is likely to disproportionately affect politically marginalised populations, in particular displaced or migrant populations. Digital practices potentially feed into inequalities because they provide opportunities for political control through surveillance and for profit through extensive private sector involvement.

The overall aim of this proposal is to understand how digitalising food assistance practices 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. It will achieve this by gathering empirical evidence on the effects of digital practices as operationalised in Sudan, India, and the UK. These three case study countries were chosen to reflect the widely contrasting political economy, governance, and food security contexts in the Global North and South. Sudan is a country in protracted humanitarian crisis, India is a more stable country but has high levels of deprivation, and the UK has higher average income levels but growing levels of hunger. Globally, they are linked through colonial history, trade, finance, aid, and migration. Examining the effects of digital practices in such diverse contexts enables an analysis of how different practices influence power relations, inequality, and vulnerability to food insecurity at the local and global level. Within each country, research will consist of observation, key informant interviews, focus groups, and direct engagement with international and local organisations, social movements, village and camp representatives, migrant groups, unions, government, and business. Working with researchers from each case study country, the project will promote equal research partnerships through co-leadership and contribute to eroding the historically dominant relations of coloniser and colonised.

The research will be led by SOAS, University of London (UK), the Institute for Human Development (IHD) in New Delhi (India), and the University of Khartoum (Sudan) (facilitated by CEDEJ-Khartoum), with the following collaborating partners engaged in food assistance: the Darfur Development and Reconstruction Agency (DDRA) in Sudan, Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) in India, and the Food Foundation in the UK. This provides a unique combination of academic and policy networks. With expertise in development and humanitarian studies, food studies, politics, and anthropology, the research will contribute to theory on the societal and governmental effects of digitalisation, on the political economy of aid and social welfare, and on the structural causes of food insecurity. The research findings will also have direct implications for policy, ranging from the risks of excluding vulnerable populations, to private sector benefits and security concerns, to implications for sovereignty, and for holding governments and aid actors to account. A number of working papers, policy reports, blogs, podcasts, and a photo series, will be produced throughout the project and disseminated via a dedicated SOAS website and social media account, and regular seminars (e.g., the SOAS Food Forum) and workshops.