Politics of Food and Digital Technology Archives

Politics of Food and Technology Series | Food crisis in the UK and the digitalisation of welfare: Bridging gaps or deepening marginalisation?

By ISS Blog Bliss 5 February 202619 February 2026 450 views

This blog is part of a series on ‘the Politics of Food and Technology’, in collaboration with the SOAS Food Studies Centre. All of the blogs in this series are contributions made at the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference in Istanbul-Bergen, October 2025, to the panel with a similar title. To read the rest of the blogs in this series, please click here.

In this blog, Iris Lim, Susanne Jaspars, and Yasmin Houamed (SOAS) highlight a growing food crisis in the UK, alongside a ‘digital-by-default’ welfare transformation. Digitalisation has created the potential to exclude poor and politically marginalised populations because they are unable to pay for digital access, and because of the way the system has been designed. They argue that this exacerbates already existing food insecurity and that digital access is fundamental to addressing it.

Over the last decade, the UK’s deepening food crisis has unfolded alongside a ‘digital-by-default’ transformation of welfare and food support infrastructures. Over this period, food insecurity has increased to as much as 18% of the UK population (in 2022). Emergency food distribution, almost unknown a decade ago, has soared, with Trussell, one of the UK’s largest food bank networks, distributing 2.9 million emergency food parcels in 2024-25, the equivalent of one parcel every 11 seconds. Policymakers routinely justify digitalisation for reasons of efficiency and accountability, but in this blog, we show how it redistributes responsibility and burden downward onto those already experiencing deprivation and food insecurity and deepens exclusions for those that need welfare the most across England. For a wide range of population groups (for example refugees, migrants, or white working class), design and delivery choices shape who gets help and who falls through the cracks.

In the UK, the digitalisation of welfare started with Universal Credit in 2012, which combined seven different benefits (unemployment, housing, child benefit, etc) to a single monthly payment. It requires claimants to apply online, and to provide ongoing online entries and communications with work coaches. Despite concerns raised early on about exclusions due to digital poverty, this was followed by online registration and pre-paid debit cards for the ‘Healthy Start’ government food support programme (for pregnant women and those with young children) in 2022. Free school meals have also been digitalised, and several government and charitable organisations distribute digital vouchers to be redeemed in supermarkets. Supermarkets and other retailers have also developed a number of apps to supply food to organisations and to individuals. Government digitalisation strategies from 2010 were driven by austerity policies which entailed cutting welfare and public service spending, Amnesty International, in examining the UK’s welfare system, concluded that it does not comply with obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Human rights violations include the barriers imposed by digitalisation because they increase hardship.

Poverty as a digital ‘paywall’

Poverty acts as a digital ‘paywall’ to food assistance and wider welfare access. Access to digital devices, data, and skills, all contingent on affordability, has become a prerequisite for gaining welfare support. Few people living in poverty have smartphones and so rely on basic phones, or, in the case that their phones have been lost or stolen, they rely on shared numbers. For those who did have smartphones, data poverty pervaded their experience. Those unable to purchase data for internet connectivity must hop between public Wi-Fi hotspots or borrow hotspots from volunteers. Broadband social tariffs are available from some internet providers but are poorly publicised and often unaffordable or unavailable where needed. According to one assessment, 95% of eligible households miss out. In some rural and peri-urban areas, connectivity infrastructure is lacking, making access difficult. Exclusion operates through market mechanisms, requiring people to purchase access to claim public support.

Eroding infrastructure and disappearing spaces of care

The shift to digital has coincided with the systemic erosions of physical spaces where people could previously get face-to-face help. Austerity policies since 2010 have driven library closures, reduced hours of available community support and cut staff across England. Even where physical spaces of support persist, limited opening days, travel costs, and absent staff constrain access. People fill these gaps by paying to print from private internet cafes or taking longer bus journeys seeking help where they can.

As public spaces with face-to-face support have diminished, food banks and community support organisations have doubled as social infrastructure where people can still receive mediated digital access and build trust and skills, yet these remain volunteer dependent and uneven.

Myth of simple digital literacy

One persistent issue underpinning digital welfare is the assumption that digital competence and skills is straightforward – that if someone can use a smartphone, they can navigate a digital welfare system. The reality is far more complex. Digital skills vary highly by context and people adept at sending messages and photos to their friends on social media apps may struggle with formal emails, government portals, and forms. These concerns cut across generations and familiarity with technology, affecting older adults and younger people alike. Language and literacy also create key barriers, with both English as an Additional Language (EAL) and native English speakers struggling when they confront text-heavy portals and official language. To fill this gap, only ad hoc chains of help and translation through friends, children, and volunteers mediate a fragile and uneven access.

Design choices

Interface and service design itself shapes patterns of exclusion. Designers build platforms that work best on desktop computers, but most marginalised people use them on mobile phones with tiny screens and face difficulty uploading required documents. Some systems still require people to download PDFs, print them, fill them out by hand, scan them, and email them back. These complicated user journeys overwhelm even confident users, especially if they have to travel to access a printer or scanner, which introduces new costs to your attempt to access food assistance. Small missteps, such as a missed upload deadlines or dropped connection, often produce detrimental sanctions or benefits losses.

As Taylor notes in ‘Beyond the Numbers’, when systems demand proof that vulnerable people cannot provide, we risk ‘institutionalising a bias towards the visible’. In the UK, welfare design may be embedding this bias directly into interfaces and processes. Rather than streamlining access for those who need food assistance the most, digitalisation seems optimised for administrative efficiency. This creates obstacles for users who must travel far to scan forms, navigate portals instead of speaking to humans, and be digitally competent to demonstrate their need through online forms. Within the UK Welfare system as a whole, several organisations including Amnesty International have highlighted the ‘punitive regime’ of administration and complexity needs to access benefits that people are eligible for.

The psychological toll

The digital-first regimes carry heavy psychological costs, such as anxiety around sanctions for simply missing an email, humiliation at intrusive verification, and a sense of being set up to fail. People describe panic when payments stop, tears at job centre interactions, and resignation among older residents too proud or too demoralised to ask for help. The shift to digital has removed the human interactions, that at their best, allowed for discretion and dignity.

Conclusion: The politics of digital-by-default and its effect on food insecurity

In a context of cuts and rising need, the UK’s digital transformation of welfare and food assistance often deepens rather than bridges marginalisation. By layering device and data requirements and eroding in-person infrastructures, digitalisation reorganises access to food assistance, welfare, and ultimately, food security, through new forms of stratification. The UK government has developed a welfare system that makes it difficult to navigate for precisely those who need it the most.

Digitalisation has coincided with increases in food insecurity and has added to the burden on food assistance projects, and often volunteers, which now also provide support with digital access. The timing is good to bring about change. The Government is committed to reducing dependence on emergency food parcels. And initiatives like The Crisis and Resilience Fund could make digital inclusion a core part of food security policy and not just an afterthought.

More Reading: This blog post uses findings from an ERSC-funded project entitled: Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide. See: https://digitalisingfood.org/.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Iris Lim is a Postdoctoral Researcher and works on the UK case study for the ESRC-funded project that analyses the effect of digitalising food assistance. Her research examines digital public service delivery, digital inclusion, citizenship and integration, and critical user-experience (UX) research.

Susanne Jaspars is the Principal Investigator of the same project. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre. She is also a Research Associate at CEDEJ Khartoum, and co-editor of Disasters Journal. Susanne researches the political dynamics of food in situations of conflict, food and humanitarian crisis, and has also analysed migration and asylum policies. Other interests include social approaches to nutrition and accountability for mass starvation. She has worked mostly in the Horn of Africa, often Sudan, but increasingly also in Europe.

Yasmin Houamed

Yasmin Houamed is the Research Assistant for the UK case study of the ESRC-funded Digitalising Food Assistance project. She received her MA in Anthropology of Food at SOAS, University of London, and her BA in Political Science from Stanford University. Her research has previously focused on food systems and commodification in Tunisia.

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Politics of Food and Technology Series | When the System Says No: Digitalization and Accountability in Food Aid

By ISS Blog Bliss 29 January 2026 522 views

Digital tools promise efficiency and impartiality in humanitarian response. In food aid, biometric systems are meant to ensure that the ‘right’ people receive assistance. But when the verification of need depends on being readable by a machine, accountability shifts. Drawing on field experience in South Sudan, Hayley Umayam explores how exclusions come to look like a system error rather than a downstream effect of human decision-making.

Needs-based programming is the organizing principle of most contemporary humanitarian action. In South Sudan, where millions require assistance each year, and resources are consistently insufficient to meet needs, organizations justify allocation choices through a ‘logic of impartiality’: aid should go to those most in need. This logic is increasingly operationalized through digital and technocratic systems designed to make suffering measurable, commensurable, quantifiable, and thus ‘governable’.

Over the past decade, humanitarian agencies have turned to digital tools like fingerprint scanners and unique digital identifiers to manage service delivery. These tools promise accuracy and efficiency, an appeal that is easy to understand in a world of shrinking aid budgets and growing demand. They offer a way to demonstrate that limited resources are used responsibly and that assistance is delivered to the “right” people, thereby reinforcing claims of impartiality. There are plenty of technological evangelists, too, highlighting the potential use of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning in ‘streamlining’ the aid process.

Within this paradigm of impartiality-through-efficiency, accountability becomes largely procedural. It risks being defined less by relationships with affected communities than by the ability to show that needs-based logic has been correctly applied. If you can demonstrate that you followed needs-based logic using the right indicators, vulnerability criteria, and verification procedures with some level of “community buy-in”, you are seen as accountable. In other words, claiming that “the most in need” were reached is a way of demonstrating impartiality, and accountability is about legitimizing hard choices in contexts where almost everyone can qualify as in need. Strangely, humanitarian hyper-prioritization may actually lead to a reduction in the number of people who can access aid.

South Sudan makes the limits of this approach especially visible. Routinely described as complex and protracted, it is a setting where identifying the “most in need” is not only contested but, in practice, impossible to do in any complete sense. Selection is less about discovering need in any comprehensive sense than about justifying exclusion in the most acceptable way under conditions of scarcity.

When I reflect on the promises and risks of digitalization in these conditions, I return to a moment early in the rollout of biometric systems at food distributions I helped monitor. This encounter may seem mundane, but shows how core ideas of need, accountability, and responsibility are shifting as humanitarian action is increasingly digitally mediated.

“Before the computer, we used to get food”

At a food distribution site in Lakes State, a woman presses her finger onto a biometric scanner. The machine beeps, and the screen shows a red X: Not matched. She wipes her hand, prays, and tries again. After several attempts, the screen finally turns green. The next woman in line is less fortunate. Her fingerprints fail repeatedly. After trying multiple machines, she is sent home without food, her distress visible.

“They have brought computers in and these useless cards that make some of us not get food,” she says. “Before, without the computer and with our previous cards, we used to get food.”

During these early months of biometric rollout, moments like this were common. Fingerprint readers often struggled with calloused, dusty, or sooty hands. People waited anxiously to undergo a process they did not fully understand. Some prayed before placing their finger on the device, others cried with relief when the screen flashed green. And when it didn’t, there was little to be done but blame the computer.

The long social and moral labor of being selected, being summoned for a distribution, queuing, and presenting oneself as deserving collapses into a single, opaque interaction between body and machine. At that moment, one’s neediness is technical, not social or relational.

“It’s the System That Decides”

Frontline staff experienced these moments of biometric failure with their own mix of frustration, sympathy, and resignation. They had been trained on the new equipment, but they could not control how the machines behaved. When the screens displayed error messages, there was often little they could do to fix the problem on the spot. They could not see inside the system or override its judgement. While they could log exclusions in hopes of a ‘catch-up’ distribution cycle, I seldom saw mention of this in upstream reporting. Concretely, a non-recognized fingerprint simply meant no food, while a distribution that adhered to its list of scannable beneficiaries checked the box of impartiality.

Biometric systems were introduced into an already tense moral terrain. Even before digitalization, frontline staff were the face of decisions that they often had no control over. Caseload numbers were set elsewhere, and it was the unenviable task of field teams to turn those inevitably constrained numbers into a verified list of the “most in need.”

In this context, some staff began to see digital tools as a buffer against the reactions of the affected-but-excluded. Instead of saying we cannot assist you, staff could say the system does not recognize you.

Who is accountable for technical errors?

Some of these early rollout issues have been partially mitigated over time. Nevertheless, the encounter at the scanner still matters because it offers a glimpse into how humanitarian need and accountability are being reconfigured, which will likely only continue with increased digital aid practices.

Exclusion appears as a technical error rather than a consequence of prioritization and human decision-making. This sustains a humanitarian fantasy of impartial needs-based programming in which defaults to technical systems and procedures. By transforming moral and political decisions into technical ones, humanitarian organizations can maintain legitimacy amid chronic shortfalls, while displacing responsibility onto machines and caseloads. This procedurally legitimizes needs-based distributions while making certain bodies invisible, producing a formal sense of impartiality even as real-world access is uneven. Meanwhile, those with unrecognizable fingerprints have limited recourse to accountability.

None of this means digital tools should be rejected outright. In many contexts, they can limit some forms of abuse and allow aid to reach people who might otherwise be excluded. But if we evaluate them only in terms of their supposed efficiency or as neutral tools of impartiality, we miss how they redistribute responsibility, normalize exclusion, and translate need into something that exists only when a system can verify it.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Hayley Umayam is a PhD candidate at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the politics of knowledge and expertise in famine and mass starvation. She holds an MA in Peace and Justice Studies from the University of San Diego.

Politics of Food and Technology Series | From digital solutionism to digital resilience

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 January 202619 January 2026 516 views

This blog is part of a series on ‘the Politics of Food and Technology’, in collaboration with the SOAS Food Studies Centre. All of the blogs in this series are contributions made at the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference in Istanbul-Bergen, October 2025, to the panel with a similar title. To read the rest of the blogs in this series, please click here.

In this blog, ICRC Senior Policy Advisor Pierrick Devidal highlights the systemic humanitarian implications of the ‘Politics of Food and Technology’, arguing that humanitarians need to move away from a techno-solutionist and productivity driven approach, to one based on rights and digital resilience-building. This shift would strengthen their capacity to leverage digital technologies to achieve their objectives and to stay aligned with their principles.

As the contributions to this series illustrate, humanitarians are increasingly aware that the bright promises of the digital transformation often come with a darker side. After years of bingeing on digital solutions, humanitarian organizations are waking up with a ‘digital hangover’: confronted with digital distortions of their ethics and overwhelmed by cybersecurity risks beyond their control. There is no doubt that technology provides significant opportunities for humanitarians to extend their reach and impact, yet the risks that this step implies are equally significant. Understanding the broader socio-political context in which the digital transformation has emerged can help deconstruct the fictions that underpin the promises of techno-solutionism, allowing for a recommitment to the humanitarian ethos and better management of the risks of over-reliance on digital technologies – including for food assistance.

Looking back to move forward

The rapid rise of digital solutions to humanitarian problems in the 2000’s was framed by the promise of convenience, speed, and scale. This was understandably persuasive for organizations faced with increasing global needs, limited budgets, and numerous obstacles to safely accessing communities. In the hope of lower cost and resource efficiency, humanitarians embraced digital innovation solutions. Additionally, those offered remote-controlled intervention opportunities reducing physical exposure to the increasing security risks of operating in unstable environments. In a context of generalized techno-determinism – and the idea that technological developments are an inevitable conduit to progress – donors strongly encouraged them to go further.

However, behind the lure of innovation and performance, the ‘digitalization of everything’ was also driven by the ‘securitization of everything’. In the context of the so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’, data and digital surveillance became key instruments for security agencies, and humanitarian organisations – operating in territories sometimes controlled by non-state armed groups listed as ‘terrorists’ – often considered potential suspects. The data trail of digital humanitarian solutions provided an opportunity to reduce perceived fraud and aid diversion. The digital transformation of humanitarian action therefore, became the cradle of ‘surveillance humanitarianism’, opening access to vast amounts of people’s personal data to State and private actors that could misuse it for non-humanitarian purposes.

The normalization of digital cash transfers replacing more traditional cash assistance mechanisms illustrates the shift. Under the cover of convenience, speed, and improved security, this ‘digital solution’ also brought new parameters that were fundamentally at odds with humanitarian considerations. For example, humanitarian partnerships with banking actors introduced ‘Know Your Customer’ requirements into the system and effectively turned recipients of aid into presumed fraudsters and possible terrorists. By joining digital cash transfers programs – to which there were often no alternatives – affected people submitted themselves to surveillance systems, in practice forced to trade away their biometric data to access cash assistance. The gain of financial inclusion and autonomy came with significant risks that their personal data be accessed and misused by authorities to arrest, persecute, or even kill them.

While mainstreaming digital solutions, humanitarians unconsciously undermined their ability to identify and mitigate the harm they may be causing. Convenience and security for donors and humanitarian organisations may have come at the price of digitally triggered insecurity for the people they are meant to protect and help. Despite significant progress in the domain of data protection and cash transfers since then, profound challenges remain.

Deconstructing the fictions behind the promise of digitalization

The ‘digitalization of everything’ has permeated humanitarian language itself, creating an urge to add the ‘digital’ prefix to longstanding concepts to appear relevant and cutting edge: ‘digital dignity’, ‘digital harm’, and even ‘digital famine’. While useful to capture technologically influenced evolutions, this verbal tic can in fact create the illusion that these concepts have a ‘digital double’, disconnected from real life. Yet, the consequences of ‘digital harms’ are very tangible for the people that experience them.

The concept of ‘digital sovereignty’ is another fiction that can have dangerous consequences. It is a chimera (made up of various different, and sometimes contradictory parts), and the notion itself is at odds with the reality of the intrinsically global and interconnected digital domain. Those who try to achieve it, including through digital surveillance and censorship, quickly face its limits and boomerang effects, unconsciously highlighting the extent of their digital dependencies. For example, internet shutdowns meant to curb instability or public demonstrations often feed more discontent due to their paralyzing, and very costly, impact on the economy. Their secondary effect on food security can be devastating when the absence of cash and the impossibility to use digital cash transfers and remittances makes food inaccessible, thus deepening humanitarian crises.

The multiplication of ‘big data’ and algorithmic systems for needs assessments have also indirectly transformed food assistance. While strengthening anticipatory and early warning systems to detect possible food crises, they have also distorted humanitarian impartiality. As we have now learned, ‘big data’ can turn into ‘bad data’. The inherent limitations of data – which are often at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate – can be amplified by algorithms and generate biases and discriminations that exclude those in the digital periphery or on the other side of the digital divides.

This offers lessons-to-be-learned for humanitarians. By massively investing in the development of their digital capabilities for the promise of increased efficiency, they have inadvertently expanded their vulnerability to cyber and digital risks. In doing so, they multiplied their dependencies and relinquished their autonomy and independence to technology providers who do not stand by the same values and objectives. Without building back their ability to operate normally when connectivity is disrupted, they risk becoming prisoners of those dependencies and non-humanitarian agendas. With the emerging ubiquity of ‘artificial intelligence’ based systems in the operational and information management set-up of humanitarian organisations, it is the impartiality of aid that is now at risk of disappearing into algorithmic ‘black boxes’.

Building humanitarians’ digital resilience

In a context of staggering need, increasing political pressure, and reduced budgets, there is no doubt that humanitarians must harness the potential of digital technologies for more efficiency and better impact – including in the food assistance domain. Yet, they must urgently redefine their relationship to digital technologies to be able to better prevent and mitigate the risks such technologies create for both humanitarian organizations and the people they serve. What is needed is to switch from a solution driven and productivity-based approach, to a problem and resilience driven one based on rights.

The pathway to digital resilience – designing humanitarian responses systems that effectively integrates digital risks and can function through digital disruptions – is a re-commitment to the humanitarian principles and understanding of their application in digital environments. Concretely, for humanitarians, this starts by:

Understanding the profoundly political nature of the digital transformation to prevent the risk of humanitarian actors partnering with State or private actors whose political agendas and economic objectives lead to techno-colonialism and digital extractivism – undermining their neutrality, independence, and commitment to ‘do no harm’.

Acknowledging that humanity cannot be data-fied and accepting that if digital tools and data can help, they cannot replace the unquantifiable yet critical human elements that underpin empathy and respect for dignity and the heart of humanitarian action.

Ensuring that the data and digital tools used to identify humanitarian needs do not create blindness to the needs that such tools are not designed to see – to preserve impartiality in a world of AI hallucinations and data biases.

Reducing and better managing digital dependencies to maintain the ability to operate and deliver aid anywhere it is needed – even when there is no connectivity – to avoid that human survival and dignity become hostages of data or access to the internet.

In short, building resilience against the dark side of the digital transformation has become the only way to avoid that what defines humanitarianism gets lost in digital translation.

Further reading:

This blog builds on an academic article by the same author: “Lost in digital translation? The humanitarian principles in the digital age”, International Review of the Red Cross (2024), 106 (925), 120–154, available at https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/reviews-pdf/2024-11/lost-in-digital-translation-the-humanitarian-principles-in-the-digital-age-925.pdf

BLISS will be publishing various blogs from this series over the next few months. For more information about the project ‘Digitalising Food Assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide’, check out the project website, or overview on the website of SOAS, University of London.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Pierrick Devidal is a Policy Adviser at the ICRC. He has worked as an ICRC Field and Protection delegate in Colombia and Darfur, for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Pierrick holds a LL.M in International Law and a Master’s in International Relations and Political Science.

Politics of Food and Technology Series | The digital paradox: Digital food assistance in Sudan as a tool for efficiency or exploitation?

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 January 2026 869 views

In this blog, Tamer Abd Elkreem (University of Khartoum) and Susanne Jaspars (SOAS) argue that digitalised food assistance in Sudan presents an extreme case of digitalisation as lifesaving but at the same time its weaponisation through internet shutdowns. It feeds into power relations and a violent, extractive political economy by excluding some of the most marginalised and functioning as a tool for economic and political control.

Food assistance has a long history in Sudan, as has its manipulation for political purposes. Efforts to digitalise finance, food, and social assistance started in the mid-2010s for reasons of access, accountability and efficiency, including through the use of biometric ID cards, pre-paid bank cards, electronic vouchers, online self-registration, and mobile money. These initiatives involve a range of organisations, authorities, and companies (e.g. telecoms, internet providers, banks, merchants). The current war and its humanitarian repercussions offer a critical lens through which to examine the dual nature of digitalisation: it is a life-saving intervention as it is one of the only ways that aid can be provided to crisis-affected people since the start of the 2023 war. At the same time, though, digitalisation leads to new exclusions and feeds into inequalities. We argue that the digitalisation of food assistance must be understood within the context of asymmetrical power relations, competing interests, and political economy.

The weaponisation of communications

The manipulation of communication systems has become a weapon of war . The banking system collapsed in April 2023 with the start of the war between Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) from April 2023. The Bank of Khartoum had the only banking app (Bankak) that continued to function, because it had developed online solutions separate from the Central Bank infrastructure and was not dependent on its electronic switch. It soon became the main way of assisting people in Sudan, as international humanitarian organisations left, and – already limited – government social protection programmes stopped. Moving physical goods across the frontline (that divides the east from the west of the country) became almost impossible.

In February 2024, the RSF sabotaged government internet service providers (in large parts of Sudan, including Darfur, Khartoum, and Al-Gezira), stopping communication and digital cash transfers for at least 2 months until it was gradually restored in some areas. At the same time, RSF and affiliated traders brought in Starlink satellite dishes from Chad and United Arab Emirates to provide internet services. They could benefit economically from charging fees for internet access but more importantly, could control communications and conduct surveillance of the population. In war-affected areas, Bankak and Starlink devices have become the only means of access for besieged communities, for examples in cities like Al-Fashir during much of 2024 and 2025. In our research, we see that access to Starlink internet access is clearly linked to war dynamics and stability of RSF control: the more securely held, the more Starlink services and the lower the cost of access. In areas of active war Starlinks services are subject to heavy security surveillance or are confiscated to prevent its used for intelligence communications to SAF. In October 2025, the RSF at first live-streamed their massacres in Al-Fashir to show their capture of the city, but following widespread international condemnation completely blocked communications to cover up the atrocities.

Digital exclusions

Though digital cash transfers provide aid to some, many are excluded. Clearly, the internet shutdowns discussed above are the most extreme form of exclusion. Otherwise, humanitarian operations have been underfunded, and digital innovations by international organisations (self-registration, digital vouchers, wallets and platforms) remain small scale and experimental. Charitable people in Sudan and diaspora outside the country provide cash to relatives and friends, often connected via WhatsApp, or send it to community initiatives such as soup kitchens (Takaya) and Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs). Money is most often transferred via Bankak. In the aftermath of the Al-Fashir invasion, these same WhatsApp groups became a tool for extortion. Sudanese abroad deleted the groups when it became apparent that the RSF used them to identify foreign contacts to demand ransom payments as well as to identify SAF collaborators.

So what happens to people who do not have relatives in the diaspora? In parts of Al-Gezira, we see deepening inequalities. The labourers previously working on the agricultural scheme are historically marginalised in terms of land ownership, and access to land, and social services. Few have relatives abroad. They now have no work, no diaspora aid, and are less represented on aid committees. Even if they did have friends to send money, since the SAF recapture the internet is weak and few banks are operating, and most are undocumented citizens.

For mobile money transfers, you need a bank account, an ID document, as well as a smartphone, which many in rural areas do not have. In many parts of Sudan, particularly in Darfur, people did not have these because they mistrusted government (and banks) and did not want to be visible to the state. This necessarily limited self-registration for international aid programmes using online applications, as well as who could receive transfers from diaspora. Those who did have Bankak accounts could make large profits by charging for the transfer. In RSF areas, where banks remain closed, merchants or businesses act as mini-banks. Our researchers documented the range of fees that businesses charged for money transfer transactions, and that the charge is directly related to level of insecurity and market functionality, ranging from 5% in relatively secure areas, up to 70% in the extreme case of tightened siege of Al-Fashir.

Those who did not receive sufficient assistance from organisations or through social networks, went into debt, carried out precarious work (like e.g. cleaning, cooking, petty trade – if markets were functioning), or migrated to work in gold mines. Some joined the army or militia: and so, fed directly into the war.

Feeding into unequal power relations and political economy

Digital banking and digital aid feeds into power relations and political economy through the practices used and businesses and authorities involved. Over the past year, Sudan has seen a rapid expansion of digital banking. The government enforced financial digitalisation by issuing new banknotes, a move that created a vast digital trap. Sudanese citizens were required to deposit old, unbanked cash into financial institutions but faced severe withdrawal limits, precipitating a cash crisis. This scarcity, in turn, pushed more people toward digital payments. Humanitarian organisations initiated and helped promote digital cash transfers where they had not done so before. This change also provided the government with funds for the war and undermined the economic system in areas controlled by the RSF. The RSF, in response, maintains the use of the old currency and is establishing its own currency system illegalising the new banknotes in its controlled areas.

In Sudan, the most strategic telecommunication and financial sectors had long been privatized, and mostly owned by foreign countries who are also heavily investing the war. For instance, more than 80% Bank of Khartoum, which has lions share in the digital financialization, is owned by UAE. We are also witnessing a phenomenon in which the state is being bypassed by digitalisation – including by privately-owned Starlink satellite dishes and solar panels (in places like Darfur), digital technologies using blockchain and platforms that bypass banks, and many organisations use US-based multi-national corporations to store their data. Digitalised food assistance programmes are not only eroding national sovereignty from this aspect only but also by weakening the social contract; no one, these days, is talking about the responsibilities of the state.

Conclusion

The unprecedented crisis in Sudan reveals the digitalisation of food assistance as both a lifeline and a threat, a tool that connects vulnerable communities, that both mitigates and perpetuates emergencies, and saves lives while feeding the very forces that endanger them. Through data extractivism, it simultaneously erodes national capacities, agencies, and legitimacy. Digitalisation needs to be considered from the perspective of these wider parameters rather than from a purely technical one.

More Reading:

This blog post uses findings from an ERSC-funded project entitled: Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide. See: https://digitalisingfood.org/.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Tamer Abd Elkreem is a Co-Investigator/Sudan lead researcher of the project. He is a lecturer at the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the Deputy Director of Peace Research, University of Khartoum. His research interest focuses on power relations of development, Anthropology of post-colonial state, anthropology of mega developmental projects and critical analysis of its discourses and practices in Sudan.

Susanne Jaspars is the Principal Investigator of the project. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre. Susanne researches the political dynamics of food in situations of conflict, famine, and humanitarian crisis. Ongoing interests include: regimes of food practices and power relations, social approaches to nutrition and accountability for mass starvation, European migration and asylum policies and their effects. She has worked mostly in the Horn of Africa, often Sudan.

Politics of Food and Technology Series| Beyond the Numbers: Humanitarian Response in the Absence of Data

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 November 2025 702 views

In this blog, Jeremy Taylor (PhD), Regional Head of Advocacy at the Norwegian Refugee Council, looks at some of the programming issues inherent within a reliance upon (good!) data in the humanitarian space, proposing some points for further discussion and improvement to build a digitally resilient humanitarian system.

Operational INGOs are grappling with two different yet intersecting dynamics. Firstly, the aid system is powered by numbers and, also heavily reliant on accompanying digital platforms for storing and analysing a range of quantitative indicators such as needs analyses, severity indices, caseload targets, and response monitoring frameworks. Secondly, in many frontline contexts the numbers are partial, delayed, politicized—or simply unavailable. When digital systems are fragile or authorities restrict information, our dependence on purely quantitative proof risks excluding the very people we exist to serve.

This is the double-bind the humanitarian industry now inhabits, we are more dependent than ever on quantified proof to allocate, prioritize and report, while the very places that need aid most are increasingly data-poor, data-contested or data-controlled.

Consider Sudan in early 2024. A nationwide communications blackout severed internet and phone networks for tens of millions, stalling assessments, beneficiary verification and even basic security checks. Humanitarian agencies warned operations could not continue without connectivity, and OCHA dashboards logged communications blackouts as a binding constraint across clusters. In a response architecture that assumes constant digital reporting, the data pipeline simply collapsed.

Or Ethiopia in 2021. An effective blockade of the Tigray region meant the ability of aid agencies and the UN to conduct assessments was drastically curtailed. Not only was the humanitarian space significantly impacted by political pressure, but the physical access constraints also carried with them data gaps that could not be plugged. While the Tigrayan authorities claimed there was a famine, the lack of telecoms, fuel and physical access to many parts of the region meant the quantitative data bar for a famine declaration could not be fully met. The episode revealed the need for additional qualitative indicators given how quickly a core evidence channel can be closed. And that the limited international response and accountability mechanisms that do exist, such as the UN Security Council resolution 2417 on the use of starvation as a weapon of war, are ultimately reliant on a credible data-based determination of food insecurity that in this case was not possible to obtain.

Sometimes the choke point is formalized. In Burkina Faso, what began as de facto restrictions has been codified as a visa statistique regime: any survey, census or statistical study must obtain prior authorization from the national institute, with detailed procedures governing approvals. At the same time, public statistics for internally displaced people (IDPs) have not been updated since March 2023, leaving planners to operate against stale baselines they cannot independently refresh. The intent may be order and security; the effect is constrained verification and publication, and ultimately constrained and patchy service delivery.

Compounding this is a second overlaying reality: sweeping budget cuts. By early 2025 the system was told to “hyper-prioritize”—and “do more with less”. In addition to the sweeping cuts by the United States, further reductions are expected from many traditional donors in 2026 and beyond, with few new faces around the OECD DAC table. In this climate, prioritization becomes a requirement for almost all parts of the aid system—and, inevitably, it is determined by the evidence we can marshal. When that evidence is uneven, the risks of mis-prioritization magnify.

For an operational agency, the contradictions show up in small, human ways. We try to distinguish between displaced families and impoverished hosts who share needs indicators. We worry about counting the same person three times as frontlines shift and people are displaced multiple times. We see local authorities nudge figures up to unlock supplies, or down to preserve legitimacy. We sit with community leaders who have learned, over years, which phrases trigger which boxes on which forms. And all the while, the planning machine asks us for clean imputations that field reality does not provide.

All of this leaves us with some questions.

What level of uncertainty are we prepared to accept to save lives? We have become adept at demanding high-frequency, comparable indicators; we are less comfortable acting on imperfect, triangulated signals. Yet places in blackout or under blockade will not produce gold-standard datasets. Are donors and agencies willing to define explicit “no-regrets” thresholds—a ladder of evidence that, once crossed, unlocks time-bound, life-saving response even when the denominator is fuzzy?

How should algorithmic or formula-based allocations treat invisibility? Many institutional donor funding models effectively reward measurable burden and penalize missing data. In a year of cuts, that potentially shifts resources toward where surveillance is strongest, not necessarily where need is greatest. Should allocation formulas include an “uncertainty margin” for data-denied contexts, weighted by independent access analysis and expert consensus, so that lack of visibility does not equal lack of value?

Can we protect impartial analysis space from political veto—without losing the ability to operate? The IPC experience in Ethiopia—and the hyper-contested statistics environment more broadly—shows how easily analysis can be stymied. What minimum guarantees (on methods, publication and dissenting notes) are we, as a system, willing to insist on before we put our logos on a consensus number? And if those guarantees are absent, can we normalize transparent ranges and scenario narratives rather than offering a false precision open to further political manipulation?

Where are our “minimum viable indicators” when digital systems fail? Sudan’s blackout laid bare our dependency on connectivity. What is the offline core data or indicators—two or three proxies per sector—that can be collected safely and quickly, with paper-first redundancies and simple integrity checks, to steer assistance for weeks at a time? If we cannot answer that now, we will keep rediscovering this vulnerability in every conflict with degraded infrastructure and intentional blockages.

How can we include data collection and dissemination as integral to the protection of humanitarian space? The Burkina Faso visa statistique offers a glimpse of a future where data permission is proceduralized as much as physical access – and becomes another indicator in the wider trajectory of tightening humanitarian space.

None of these questions diminish the real gains of the data revolution. Needs overviews are sharper than a decade ago; anticipatory models have prevented suffering; digital platforms allow us to reach more people in more creative ways. But the current equilibrium—absolute dependence on quantified proof in places where proof is systematically degraded—has institutionalized a bias toward the visible. Cuts make that bias costlier. Every time we “hyper-prioritize” using incomplete evidence, we risk reinforcing a hierarchy of suffering determined by data richness rather than human need.

So what does “beyond the numbers” look like for an operational agency? It looks like codifying uncertainty—writing it into proposals, dashboards and board papers, not burying it in footnotes. It looks like donors rewarding honest ranges and scenario-triggered scale-ups. It looks like protecting the independence of analysis even when it is inconvenient, and building redundancies for when the lights go out. Above all, it looks like keeping faith with people who exist whether or not the spreadsheet can currently count them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor is the Regional Head of Advocacy at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) covering East and Southern Africa. Based in Nairobi, he collaborates closely with institutional partners and international organizations, and his work links operational complexity to policy solutions in protracted humanitarian and conflict contexts. With a background in research and peacebuilding, his current role encompasses coordinating and leading briefings to inter-agency forums, donors, and the diplomatic community. He holds a PhD from SOAS, University of London.

The Politics of Food and Technology Series | Asserting Digital Sovereignty: The Politics of Internet Shutdowns in Africa

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 November 202514 November 2025 1040 views

This blog is the second in a series entitled In this blog, Eiman Mohamed looks at the role of digital systems in Sudan, including the effects of digital colonialism, and foreign ownership of key digital infrastructure.

Over the past decade, digital sovereignty has become an increasingly central concept in global policy debates. It refers to a state’s ability to govern its digital infrastructure, data, and cyberspace in alignment with national interests. While the term has gained traction in Western discourse as a means of protecting citizens and national data from foreign influence, its manifestation in the Global South (particularly across Africa) has followed a different trajectory.

Across the continent, internet shutdowns have emerged as a recurring expression of digital sovereignty. Governments justify them as measures to ensure national security, prevent misinformation, or maintain social order. Yet, these acts of disconnection often function as political instruments, used to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and control access to information.

Using Sudan as a case study, this blog article explores how internet shutdowns have become mechanisms for asserting digital sovereignty and examines their wider implications for state power, economic dependency, and individual autonomy.

State Autonomy or Authoritarian Control?

In theory, digital sovereignty implies the capacity of states to manage and secure their digital ecosystems responsibly and transparently. It reflects a form of autonomy aligned with self-determination and public accountability. However, within authoritarian contexts, digital sovereignty often becomes a tool of repression rather than empowerment.

In Sudan, the history of internet shutdowns illustrates this distortion. Following the 2013 protests, telecommunications companies that resisted shutdown directives were restructured to include loyal government actors, effectively granting the regime direct oversight of national connectivity. Regulatory entities in the country were frequently sidelined, while the military invoked ambiguous national security clauses to justify recurring blackouts.

These shutdowns were not isolated responses to unrest but institutionalized mechanisms of control. By disabling communication channels during protests, the state curtailed citizens’ ability to coordinate, mobilize, and document violations. Over time, digital autarky came to signify not collective governance, but exclusive authority enforced through infrastructural power; a manifestation of digital authoritarianism under the guise of sovereignty.

Economic Autonomy and the Persistence of Digital Colonialism

Digital sovereignty also encompasses the ability to shape and sustain a national digital economy free from external domination. Yet, across much of Africa, this autonomy remains constrained by digital colonialism; a structural dependence on foreign-owned technologies, platforms, and infrastructures.

In Sudan, the 2024 internet shutdowns exposed the fragility of this economic autonomy. When connectivity was severed, online mobile banking platforms, relied upon by millions for remittances and daily transactions, became inoperable. The resulting liquidity crisis crippled household economies and informal markets, as people lost access to cash, wages, and essential goods.

In the absence of state-provided connectivity, citizens turned to Starlink, a satellite service operating beyond national control and one that is open to profit-bearing and other political influences. Access was mediated through militarized networks, where civilians paid inflated prices to armed groups for limited connectivity. This dynamic generated profits for militias, bypassed regulation, and deprived the state of revenue.

Rather than restoring sovereignty, the shutdown fragmented Sudan’s digital economy into competing domains of authority: foreign, military, and informal. What was presented as a gesture of independence in fact deepened dependency, illustrating how disconnection reproduces digital colonialism in new and exploitative forms.

Individual Autonomy, Dignity, and Food Security

The human dimension of digital sovereignty extends beyond the state and economy to the individual. In the contemporary world, digital access underpins not only communication but also livelihoods, humanitarian assistance, and access to food.

In Sudan, the 2024 shutdown directly undermined this autonomy. The blackout halted digital payment systems, severing millions from remittances and cash transfers essential for food and medicine. Humanitarian organizations that relied on digital platforms for coordination were unable to deliver aid efficiently. Community networks that tracked safe routes for bread and flour deliveries were silenced.

As connectivity vanished, digital exclusion translated into material deprivation. In Khartoum and other cities, communal kitchens shut down after losing access to mobile money platforms, leaving low-income families without affordable meals. Those able to afford satellite connections often paid exorbitant fees at military checkpoints, while marginalized groups were left completely disconnected.

In these conditions, internet shutdowns became a form of infrastructural violence, determining who could access basic resources and who could not. Connectivity itself became a marker of privilege, linking digital exclusion to hunger, insecurity, and indignity.

Rethinking Digital Sovereignty in the Global South

Sudan’s experience underscores the need to reconceptualize digital sovereignty in the Global South. It is not merely about who owns data or infrastructure, but about how power is exercised through connectivity and disconnection.

When state autonomy transforms into authoritarianism, digital sovereignty ceases to serve the public. When shutdowns fracture local economies, economic independence gives way to new forms of dependency. And when digital access becomes contingent on wealth or political loyalty, individual dignity and survival are compromised.

Ultimately, digital sovereignty must be understood as a struggle for justice, autonomy, and existence. In many parts of Africa, internet shutdowns are not simply acts of censorship; they determine who speaks, who eats, and who survives.

Reframing digital sovereignty through the lenses of autonomy and justice reveals that the politics of digital control in Africa are inseparable from the politics of life itself.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Eiman Mohamed

Eiman Mohamed is a cybersecurity expert and digital development practitioner with more than seven years of experience driving digital transformation and implementing ICT projects across both private and non-profit sectors. Her expertise lies in cybersecurity governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), as well as digital development project design and implementation particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts mainly in Sudan, Africa.

She holds a Master of Science in Digital Development from the University of Manchester (2024). Her research interests include digital political economy, digital justice, and digital finance.

Politics of Food and Technology Series | The Politics of Food and Digital Technologies in Changing Global and Local Crises

By ISS Blog Bliss 6 November 202520 November 2025 1044 views

Digitalisation is transforming how food and humanitarian assistance are delivered across the Global South and the Global North – from Sudan and India to the UK. While promoted as efficient and accountable, these systems often reproduce exclusions and reinforce unequal power relations. In this introductory blog, Yasmin Houamed argues that digitalisation is not a neutral innovation but a political process, fraught with risks and vulnerabilities.

Over more than a decade, inequality, food crises and humanitarian emergencies have increased globally. Humanitarian crises are not confined to the Global South. This is closely linked to a changing geopolitics and the effect of decades of neoliberal ideologies. , the results of which are evident in widely varying contexts, for example, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, India’s protracted hunger crisis, and the UK’s deepening food crisis. This trend is also associated with an increase in technocratic approaches, including the digitalisation of food and humanitarian assistance. While promoted for reasons of efficiency and accountability, the use of digital technologies to provide assistance can lead to new forms of exclusion, or the formalisation of existing inequalities. Digital technologies involve powerful transnational and national companies, states, and organisations, each with their own specific political and economic motivations, interests, and effects.

This post, the first in a series on The Politics of Food and Digital Technology by BLISS in collaboration with the SOAS Food Studies Centre, introduces key themes that emerged from our recent panel with the same title at the International Humanitarian Studies Association conference, held in Bergen and Istanbul in October 2025. The following blogs in the series are based on each of the presentations in the panel, as well as comments from the discussants.

1. Digitalisation as Fiction

The push to digitalise critical services has become almost unquestioned in multiple contexts. In the UK, as panelist Iris Lim outlined, the Universal Credit welfare system has been digital-by-default since 2013. This digitalisation clashes with the reality of individuals excluded from accessing support due to their limited access to devices or internet, difficulties navigating bureaucratic processes, or (lower) digital literacy.

Governments and donors describe digital tools as neutral and objective, yet their use often masks political choices. As discussant Pierrick Devidal observed, humanitarian actors risk falling for “the fiction” of digitalisation – forgetting its long history and that key foundational elements of humanitarianism do not align with it.

Panelist Hayley Umayam’s research in South Sudan (2017–2020) shows how biometric registration as part of “needs-based” targeting shifts accountability away from people and onto digital systems by “translating uncertainty into procedural legitimacy,” giving the illusion of fairness even when large groups are excluded.

The attraction of innovation can distract from these realities. Technologies promise efficiency, but for whom? For recipients, digitalisation can mean new barriers, surveillance, and loss of agency. For service providers, it can mean extra work and less flexibility. To move beyond fiction, digitalisation must be grounded in lived realities and complement, not replace, human judgment.

2. Digitalisation as an Incomplete Image

Digitalisation promises visibility, yet it also produces blindness. As panelist Jeremy Taylor argues, the humanitarian sector’s increasing reliance on digital data creates a paradox of visibility: those most in need are often least visible to digital systems. He uses the example of the 2022 siege of Tigray, where data collection was nearly impossible or was manipulated by Ethiopian authorities. The question we must return to, Taylor asks, is “What levels of uncertainty are we willing to accept in order to save lives?” Digitalisation, in this sense, creates an incomplete picture of need – one that privileges measurable (if imperfect) data over on-the-ground knowledge.

Similarly, as panelist C.Sathyamala outlines, the digitalisation of India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) fails to provide for the most marginalised. For example, fingerprint authentication excludes manual labourers whose worn prints make them “illegible” to the state. In both cases, uncertainty by digital measures excludes the most vulnerable.

3. Digital systems as a Double-Edged Political Tool

Digital systems can function as tools of control, and they can also create new forms of exclusion.. Several of our panel papers examined how digitalisation reshapes power within and beyond state borders.

Panelist Eiman Mohamed’s paper on “digital sovereignty” highlighted another dynamic in Sudan: government-imposed internet shutdowns used to control communication and dissent. Rather than liberating states or citizens, digitalisation can reinforce dependency on global technology and finance companies – a form of “digital colonialism.”

India’s biometric ID cards are another example. C. Sathyamala describes how what started as a surveillance project for citizenship evolved into an asset making system where data collection becomes an important resource leading to capital accumulation. It is apparent from the cases presented that data is not neutral. It serves political, economic, and strategic interests as much as humanitarian ones.

4. Rethinking Responsibility: From Digital to Dignity

Similar questions of ethics, agency, and responsibility surfaced across all the papers. As discussant Usha Ramanathan observed, the fact that the same problems recur across regions is both “fascinating and depressing” – but recognising this commonality creates space for collective solutions. Increasingly, when technology fails them, the burden falls on individuals to navigate complex systems and challenge opaque, unaccountable bureaucracies. As Umayam puts it, the “moral burden is displaced onto digital processes.”

This shift dehumanises recipients of aid as they are treated automatically as potential fraudsters, having to continually verify their identity and ‘neediness’. Devidal argues for “building back” capacities that have been outsourced to digital systems: local discretion, trust, and accountability could all play into a wider conversation about ‘digital resilience’.

Across all cases, digitalisation reorders power – between citizens and states, between public and private actors, and between visible and invisible marginalised groups.

Conclusion

Digitalisation introduces new risks: surveillance, corporate capture and exclusion. Policymakers and humanitarian actors must ask not only what technology delivers but what it sidelines – local knowledge, trust, and human judgment.

Digitalisation is a political choice, not an inevitability. Systems must be designed to serve people rather than power, recognising that data is never the whole story – and that its use carries real risks for individuals and states alike.

Acknowledgement: Many thanks to my colleagues Susanne Jaspars, C. Sathyamala, Tamer Abd Elkreem, and Iris Lim for discussions, review, and comments on an earlier version of this blog. We work together on the ESRC-funded research project examining the effects of digitalising food assistance.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Yasmin Houamed