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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 730 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, 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.

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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 939 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.

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:

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.

IHSA Annual Lecture Reflection: Counting the dead won’t save lives: looking beyond humanitarian disaster in Sudan

By ISS Blog Bliss 4 February 20253 February 2025 1296 views

In this blog, Munzoul Assal, Professor at the universities of Khartoum and Bergen, and Scholar at risk the Chr Michelsen Institute provides an in-depth discussion of the long-term crisis and instability facing Sudan. He argues that in order to reach a better outcome for Sudanese people, we must look beyond the numbers and immediate outcomes of various atrocities and concentrate too on their origins. This contribution was given as a reflection upon the first Annual IHSA Lecture that took place in Bergen, Norway, in May 2024, and is part of a series around the theme ‘War and Humanity’.

A deeply divided country across multiple lines

Sudan has gone through decades of civil wars and political instability. Wars of competing visions have developed into wars of attrition. Wars are first fought in people’s minds before being taken to the physical battlegrounds. For decades, Sudan has suffered from an identity crisis, which to me is the root cause of wars in the country. There are of course triggering factors, and uneven development is one of them.

Divisions such as Arabs versus Africans, Christians versus Muslims, ‘Patriotists’ versus ’Traitors’, etc. have dominated political discourse in post-independence Sudan. The different ruling elites, military and civilian alike, pursued policies of “unity in conformity” instead of “unity in diversity”. It has been held that the Sudanese should conform to an Arab and Muslim identity when in fact the country is quite diverse in terms of religion, ethnicity, climate, and livelihoods systems! Persons deemed not conforming to Arab and Muslim identity are alienated or discriminated against in different ways in public institutions or at best considered outliers. Media institutions, too, do not reflect the rich diversity characteristic of Sudan.

As early as the mid-1950s, people in the South, Eastern Sudan, and Darfur raised objections to the state’s policies that marginalize peripheral areas. The first war started in 1955, one year before independence, and continued for 17 years. It was ended by the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972 and there was relative peace for 10 years. War started again in 1983 and before it was put to an end by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 between the government and Southern Sudanese rebels, war then started in Darfur. And the rest is history. But not quite so!

Competing narratives to frame the current conflict

It does not make a lot of sense to talk about death and destruction in Sudan as results of the current war that has been raging for over a year and a half. That is what wars are about anyway. Since the start of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, about 11.7 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan and to neighboring countries. In Khartoum alone, 61,000 persons were killed. The total number across the country is 150,000. Death, displacement, and destruction of infrastructure should alert us to look beyond these numbers. Wars have their own histories that need to be narrated.

When this current devastating war started in April 2023, the Sudanese society had already been divided along ethnic, regional, and religious-ideological; in addition to political divisions that cut across other divisions. Competing narratives are used to describe the current war, such as:

This is a war between two armies: the RSF reneged on its commitments and wanted to seize power unconstitutionally,
This is a war between a regular army and a militia,
This is a war between those who want to see Sudan transition to democracy and those who want dictatorship,
This is a war between Western Sudan and Riverine Sudan,
This is an external invasion supported by the UAE,
This is a war orchestrated by the Islamists who used Sudan Armed Forces to get back to power,

Social and conventional media are the platforms in which these competing narratives are debated. Heated exchanges between political antagonists take place in these platforms leading to the prevalence of hate speech. The widespread looting and killings carried out by the RSF, and the indiscriminate bombing carried out by SAF, plus ethnic targeting and profiling undertaken by SAF’s military intelligence and security services compound the dire humanitarian situation and deepen interethnic hostilities.

Linking competing narratives to historical conflict

The discourse that portrays the war as conflict between Western Sudan and the rest of the country is entwined with middle class predilection of linking the current war to the Mahadist period (1881-1898) that witnessed widespread atrocities in central Sudan. This narrative ethnicizes the war and emphasizes divisions fed by post-independence political failures including uneven development, discrimination, and marginalization of peripheral areas in Sudan, like Darfur, South Kordofan, and the Blue Nile. These areas are currently active war zones and witness deteriorating humanitarian conditions.

It is ironic that the most vocal segments of the Sudanese society (the privileged, educated middle class who have access to media outlets and the international community) about atrocities and the worsening humanitarian situation are the same people who contribute to the reproduction of violence through hate speech, calling for the elimination of foes, and resisting calls for stopping the war. Yet, there are those who are working hard to confront this dire situation. In fact, the humanitarian discourse although prevalent in the Global North’s media is developed in places like Sudan. For instance, much of what comes in the media is provided by first responders and emergency rooms that cater for the immediate need of victims in the war zone. It is important to look at the situation beyond numbers. Addressing the factors behind atrocities is no less important that tackling their consequences.

The deepening humanitarian situation makes everybody suspicious about everybody else. Neighbors do not trust each other, and people accuse each other of being snitches. When SAF recaptures an area from the RSF, it arrests, tortures, and kills those accused of being collaborators with the RSF. The targeting is on ethnic basis. When the RSF occupies an area, it targets those allegedly collaborating with SAF or Islamists loyal to the former regime of President Omer El-Bashir. These types of atrocities do not find their way to the media because revealing them would defeat the narratives of those behind them. Again, these acts widen ethnic cracks and contribute to worsening humanitarian conditions.

From humanity’s perspective, the top priority is to save lives and serve survivors of atrocities. This is work that must continue, but saving lives can be realized better by contributing to addressing the causes of atrocities, and not only by counting the dead. For Sudan, the tragic situation is not dealt with candidly at the present time. There is reporting about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, but the talk about numbers, relief, and justice sweeps the issue of societal rifts under the rug. Perhaps something needs to be done here and now to uncover these rifts and their impacts.

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

About the Author

Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology at the universities of Khartoum and Bergen, and a scholar at risk at the Chr Michelsen Institute. His research areas include migration and refugee studies, conflict and peace building and citizenship. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

IHSA Annual Lecture Reflection: Starvation crimes, network shutdowns, and obstacles to humanitarian action in Gaza and Sudan

By ISS Blog Bliss 31 October 2024 2011 views

In this blog, IHSA Vice-President and Senior Research Fellow at the Food Studies Centre at SOAS (University of London) Susanne Jaspars summarises and expands upon a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture on “War and Humanity” held in Bergen in May 2024. The blog was prepared with the help of Tamer Abd Elkreem and information gathered from their research project on the effects of digitalising food assistance.

Starvation as a crime against humanity

For about a year now, there’s been talk about imminent famine- and now famine – in Gaza and parts of Sudan, with very little action. In this blog post, I discuss starvation as a war crime and crime against humanity, what can be done in practice to act on starvation crimes, and why blocking communications networks needs to be seen as such a crime.

War causes famine through acts that undermine the means of survival of particular population groups. This includes acts of commission such as attacks on production, markets, restriction of access for humanitarian actors, and the obstruction of relief. Also acts of omission such as failures to act in response to warnings or signs of famine, and acts of provision: the selective provision of food to one side of the conflict. These tactics can be part of counter-insurgency operations but also yield benefits for some. For example from being able to sell food at high prices and buy livestock at low cost, or use cheap labour from displaced populations.

Extreme famines are therefore the result of political acts or decisions (local, national, international), meaning we need to understand: Who committed the famine? How was it committed and why? Who were the victims? Who was involved? In contrast to famine, a crime is not ended, but criminals are deterred, detained, prosecuted.

Legal frameworks such as International Humanitarian law (IHL) and International Criminal Law (ICL), specify starvation as a crime: ‘It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population […] for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance … whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive’. The crime of starvation includes wilfully obstructing humanitarian aid. The term “objects indispensable to survival” includes more than food, encompassing water installations and supplies, irrigation works, medicine, clothing, shelter, fuel, and electricity. There is no pre-defined list as items indispensable to survival are evolving and context dependant.

Also, in 2018, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2417 which condemns the use of starvation as a method of warfare against civilians and emphasised that it may constitute a war crime. I would like to discuss this a little further, in particular:

How does reporting and accountability for starvation crimes work in practice?

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) report twice yearly to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Resolution 2417. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) can also write closed White Papers to the UNSC and individual donors (like FCDO or the EU) too. But how is this being operationalised?  What and how are FAO and WFP reporting?  What are some of the obstacles? 

Consider the February 2024 FAO/WFP report to the Security Council on Gaza and Sudan – which is remarkably apolitical. The report states the facts on displacement, impact on food systems, and obstruction of humanitarian access, and then what is prohibited under IHL. However, these are mostly passive statements such as:

‘Unprecedented levels of conflict-induced displacement … have occurred.’
‘Civilian infrastructure has been damaged (water, fuel, electricity, bakeries, farms)’
‘Conflict has halted production, prices have increased’
‘Humanitarian aid has been restricted’
‘Hostilities have led to telecoms blackouts’

War seems to almost be external to people’s economies or society, something neutral. Using the passive tense to describe acts of war and its effects removes politics and responsibility. This is exactly the opposite of what is needed to understand starvation crimes.

What’s not in the report is who is causing starvation and who should be held to account (although there are some exceptions about Israeli actions in Gaza – e.g on the effect of evacuations without putting adequate infrastructure and services in place). Yet, Sudan has a long history of aid manipulation and since April 2023 there is evidence of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) denying access to humanitarian aid, and of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) looting, destroying farms, and recruiting forces by threatening starvation. This presents an intensification of the long-standing extractive political economy, and involves regional and international actors. Note that exports of gold, and livestock are continuing and crude oil exports were higher in December 2023 than in the previous year.

The recommendations are all clearly needed but bland: restore humanitarian access, pressure warring parties to adhere to IHL, have an independent investigation. With UN organisations reporting, how could it be otherwise? A focus on starvation crimes was supposed to put the politics back into famine analysis. But can UN resolution 2417 do it? Questions remain on who should be reporting starvation crimes (states? resistance movements? activists? students?) and who should act on it.

The South Africa case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) sets an important precedent, in particular the amendment to the provisional measures in March 2024: to take all necessary and effective measures – without delay – for the provision of humanitarian assistance, in response to reports of famine and starvation. Since then the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking a warrant for the arrest of Israeli leaders, in another unprecedented move, for war crimes of starvation. Even with these high-level actions, the crimes continue.

In contrast, on Sudan there is mostly inaction. While starvation and genocide in Gaza is played out daily on our television screens, such reports on Sudan are rare. Recent warnings of famine, and statements by UN experts, have had little impact except to pressure warring parties to come to power-sharing agreements rather than holding them to account.

Communications networks as objects indispensable to survival

Of course, much of the lack of action in response to Sudan’s crisis is due the prioritisation of geopolitics and economic interests over humanitarian response and – ultimately – stopping the war. Sudan’s invisibility is also a result of blocking and manipulating communications networks and connectivity. Most societies are digitalised, meaning that people are increasingly dependent on connectivity for their day-to-day activities or – in the case of Sudan – their survival. Connectivity becomes important in relation to starvation crimes because:

Blocking communications networks hides information on violations of human rights and humanitarian law.
Internet shutdowns disrupt social networks, remittances, food systems.
Third, network shutdowns also block aid provision, not because it hinders the coordination, information and security of aid organisations, but aid itself is increasingly digitalised: pre-paid debit cards, electronic vouchers, and mobile money.

In Sudan, the Bankak App from the Bank of Khartoum has been a lifeline since the start of the April 2023 war because it could be used to transfer of money to crisis-affected people and local organisations. From early February, however, the RSF disabled all internet providers. Soon after, Starlink Satelites were introduced in RSF-held areas, which ordinary people pay to use for internet connection but which were brought in and managed by the RSF. As such, control over communications has become a way of denying services and resources to the enemy, life or death for ordinary citizens, as well as a new way of profiteering. It also illustrates the moral dilemmas of providing aid in conflict and the challenges of reporting on famine crimes. This does not mean we stop calling out starvation crimes, but rather highlights the importance for humanitarians to analyse famine as a political scandal that requires global as well as local action.

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

About the Author:

Susanne Jaspars is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre. She has been researching the social and political dynamics of food security, livelihoods and forced migration in situations of conflict, famine and humanitarian crises for more than thirty years. Susanne’s geographical focus is has been mostly Horn of Africa, specifically Sudan and Somalia with shorter periods in the Middle East, where she has worked as practitioner and researcher. She is currently the PI of an ESRC funded project entitled: ‘Digitalising food assistance: Political economy, governance and food security effects across the Global North-South divide.’ More information about Dr. Jaspars can be found on the SOAS website.

Revolution and music: women singing out in Sudan by Katarzyna Grabska and Azza Ahmed A. Aziz

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 August 20195 October 2020 4466 views

With the attention to Sudanese women musicians actively participating in the current uprising in Sudan, this article reflects on the history of women’s involvement in music and how their performances have acquired political claims over time.

Music in times of revolution

The ongoing revolution in Sudan started with mass protests in December 2018 (see last week’s BLISS blog), led to the overthrow of Omar El Bashir in April 2019, and to a massacre orchestrated by the Transitional Military Council on the 3^rd of June, 2019. These unprecedented peaceful protests had opened up a space for the amalgamation of creative productivity in Sudan and across the diaspora, including music. Young people and women have been portrayed as being at the forefront of the resistance. The images of women demonstrating on the streets, singing, drawing and making art on the streets have flooded the social media. However, this is a hyperbolic depiction of their actual number supported by the fact that this level of participation by them was unanticipated. The revolution has been seized by diverse women as a space to make claims for greater freedoms and liberties, including contributions to nation-building projects. Yet, these acts of citizenship (see Isin and Nielsen 2008) are highly gendered and take place within the constraints of patriarchal norms (Azza Ahmed. A. Aziz).

Music has always occupied a significant role in the multiple cultural expressions of the Sudanese nation. In the current uprising, it created a space to enact resistance and narratives of belonging. Women amateur singers as well as professional musicians in the diaspora and in Sudan have become key voices in the message of the revolution from the streets and visibilising the political claims that are being made.

In Sudan, since the coming to power of Omar El Bashir and the Islamists in 1989, the music scene has been deeply affected. Many musicians were curtailed, went into exile, and the once popular music spots in Khartoum where Sudanese jazz and popular music could be heard were banned. It was also combined with the demise of once famous music institutions in the capital. The Sudanese government’s centralisation of power under the banner of an Islamised identity was established, and this ultimately imposed specific gender codes that were legally consolidated through The Public Order Law of 1996 that established strict rules for women’s dress code and public appearance. This measure limited the public spaces where women artists could perform both in Khartoum and throughout Sudan. Despite this, women’s political and patriotic claims within songs were not silenced.

For example, an all-female music group Salute Yal Banoot, who since its foundation in 2014, has been contributing to dismantling some of the obstacles (other examples include female members of the mixed Igd Al Jalad group, Nancy Ajaj, Al Balabil, etc). These women had to navigate arbitrary refusals by the government to allow them to perform in public on stage. Salute Yal Banoot have also been actively involved in the uprising. They dedicated their performance in Kuwait in March 2019 to those who had lost their lives in the protests. On their facebook website, they stated that resistance could take different forms, one being music, and the need to embrace the collective of being Sudanese. They use the slogan of John Garang, the late leader of South Sudan, quoting him: ‘SUDANISM embraces all that is African, Arabian, Islamic and Christian. It encompasses religion, race and culture and expresses them as a unique identity. Thus, it is inherently irreconcilable with sectarianism of any kind.’ Here, their music and creative practice merge with the political potentialities of the nation that they enact through the diversity of the composition of their own music group.

To understand the musical role of women visible on the Sudanese scene in the current context, we need to situate it within the wider history of women as the producers of music in general and their performance of political songs in particular.

Historical take on women and music

Historically, women have had a significant place in musical production in Sudan according to different genres that have existed: hamassah (encouraging men to go to war: for example, Mihaira bint Aboud who encouraged the Sudanese to fight against the Turko- Egyptian occupation and who is evoked during the current revolution as a voice for women to emulate), sirah (songs for men at their weddings en route to the bride’s home, manaha (bereavement songs) and as hakamats’ songs (existing in Western Sudan encouraging men to go to war). Hence, there has been a continuum of women using music to enact gendered citizenship and the current uprising is another expression of such political actions.

The history of women’s eruption onto the Sudanese music scene was not always smooth. The first public rhythms used by women were characterized by 3 beats on the daluka (a clay drum with a leather covering) and they were known as the tumtum. They were the province of ex-slave females working in local alcohol haunts that were deemed disreputable. Eventually they became a source of emancipation for ex-slave women (ghanaya) within the urban centres of Sudan. They came to express the life experiences of working class women during the 1930s and 1940s. These rhythms became part of female wedding universes and they were equally sung by free-born female artists.

Given the popularity of the genre it was gradually appropriated by men and modified. The establishment of Radio Omdurman in 1941 made this genre intrinsic to Sudanese popular music (see also Saadia I. Malik 2003). A notable singer of this genre was Asha Al Falatiya. Asha managed to access a men’s world by shifting to the use of an orchestra. Part of her credibility as an artist was contained in the fact that she penetrated men’s world’s through her recordings that were diffused on Radio/TV Omdurman. Her political stand was well visible in a nationalistic song about defending the nation against heavy artillery external attacks where she enjoins Mussolini to wage war in Sudan’s defense in order to circumvent the duplicity of Hitler. This was a time when women’s feminism was still subject to penetrating mens’ political and economic worlds.

In the 1970s, certain forms of women’s singing were institutionalized and the penetration of women on the music scene was the product of liberalization and market forces. Eventually women started singing on television and the approbation of the official media elevated the profession of women singers. Their access to public stage, however, dwindled with sharia law and 1996 public order law.

The political momentum of the current uprising gave women musicians more opportunities to take risks and re-enter more visibly the public stage in Sudan. This gives us a sense of the ongoing transformations of gender norms and gender relations more widely.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. The first part dealing with art in the Sudanese revolution can be found here.

Image Credit: Salute Yal Bannot

Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz lives between Khartoum and London. She holds a Ph.D in Social Anthropology, with a special focus on Medical Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on cultural understandings of health and well-being. She has been following the unfolding upraising in Khartoum since December 2018 and has been documenting the everyday protest practices, focusing specifically on the artistic expressions. She is also a co-researcher with Kasia Grabska in the ISS-funded project on creative practice, mobilities and in development in Sudan.

Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a lecturer/researcher at the ISS and a filmmaker.

Creative Development | Sudan protests: artistic acts of citizenship by Azza Ahmed A. Aziz and Katarzyna Grabska

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 August 20195 October 2020 3404 views

Since December 2018, flashing images of protests in Sudan have appeared in mainstream media. This, however, barely touches upon the ongoing struggles of the changing local and diasporic dynamics of what ‘citizenship’ and belonging in Sudan mean (see ISS research project). Many acts of citizenship (see Isin and Nielsen 2008) have been most visibly associated with artistic creativity that spread across Sudan and in diaspora. In this article, we reflect on how art has been one of the key drivers of the revolution and the transformation of local and diasporic citizenship claims pertaining to Sudan.

The December 2018 Sudanese Revolution: A Hub of Artistic Creativity

The revolution was propelled by demonstrations all over Sudan. The demonstrations demanding freedom, peace and justice culminated in a million persons march happened on the 6^th of April, 2019. Demonstrators reached the Army headquarters in Khartoum and were joined by people from all over Sudan. Since that date, large swathes of the Sudanese population had been occupying a space in front of the Army headquarters (midan al itisam): the sit in space. Almost two months of occupation of this space created a world where revolutionaries could join to realize their objectives of freedom, peace and justice. They demanded that military forces that overthrew Omar El Bashir (representing military junta that came to power through a coup in 1989) on 11^th of April hand over power to a civilian led transitional government.

Artistic and creative practice has played a seminal contribution to the development of resistance and the revolution. The genesis of the sit in space had reignited a flurry of creativity ranging from painting, photography, filming, spoken word and whatsapp messaging that conveys information about its evolution to diverse audiences: the Sudanese public , the diaspora and the outside world, through graphic design, slogans, speeches, song lyrics and live recordings. Prior to the protests, art in public spaces of Khartoum was rare. Women artists were significantly more absent. During the sit in, the walls of the city became covered with extensive murals or art work.

Within the sit in zone a huge 3 km canvas was being prepared by artists within the premises of a technical training school. This canvas was to be presented to the public. It would encompass artistic symbols as well as the signatures of those who would represent all those who dedicated their lives to staying in place. Another zone, that was a rubbish dump, had been transformed into a space of beautiful art. This creative practice gave a clear sense of belonging and facilitated making political claims for many, regardless of gender, class, age and ethnic origin.

Art is fundamentally linked with revolutionary processes and plays an important role in creating a sense of belonging and citizenship. Through painting the walls of the army headquarters, singing in public, filming and photographing, the demonstrators performed acts of citizenship, expressing their ideals and demands for Sudan and their own understanding of rights as Sudanese people. With the digital access and the instant sharing of messages of hope, despair, and demands for justice, freedom and civil rule, it became possible to disseminate these practices across the globe both for those remaining in Sudan and those in diaspora.

The sit-in period was characterized by protracted negotiations between the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the driving force of public mobilization the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA). This was a fraught process that included the involvement of the notorious Rapid Security Forces (RSF) militias under the leadership of Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti) the second man within the TMC. On the 3^rd of June at the crack of dawn on the last day of the Muslim fasting month, Ramadan, the TMC brutally dispersed the people occupying the sit in space. Live bullets were fired on peaceful civilians and many people were mortally wounded, killed, raped and injured (see dying for the revolution BBC). This massacre was followed by measures aimed at terrorizing civilians and executed by the RSF that patrolled the streets, randomly harassing, beating and raping. The erasure of most of the creative acts of citizenship by painting over many of the murals on the walls of the sit in area was set into motion in order to wipe out the achievements of the revolution and silence its call. Notwithstanding that Khartoum remained eerily silent for 10 days with the internet quickly disabled and people fearing to leave their homes , the mobilization rapidly persisted.

Art, erasure and making of citizenship

The erasure of art orchestrated by the TMC, in the aftermath of the massacre, points to the power of art and artists to create a political space for expression of citizenship. Yet, the massacre and the erasure led to other creative practices in music and visual art that frames new contours of belonging and political rights. During the six months of protests and especially during the massacre, many lost their lives. They were framed as martyrs. They became a motivation for the youth who started proclaiming their right not to be forgotten: ‘we will not forget and we will not forgive, blood for blood we will not accept monetary compensation’. This expresses their intent to persevere in creating a better Sudan worthy of their sacrifice. This particular narrative of how martyrs are predominantly represented is visible in the music of Ahmed Amin.

In visual art, the work of Assil Diab, a Sudanese artist living in Qatar, illustrates the significance of remembering and documenting the sacrifices of those who died during the peaceful protests. Alongside a group of artists, she paints wall murals depicting the faces of the fallen on the walls of their family homes. She seeks permission from their families to bear testimony to the fact that Sudan has not forgotten their sons and daughters (graffiti art).

Through art, young musicians and visual artists are constructing a new model of a deserving citizen, a martyr. The calls for freedom, peace, and justice, sit alongside other claims to citizenship depicted here through these ‘good deaths’. This medium instills that martyrs are occupying a worthy place in the hierarchy of citizens in Sudan. This is just one aspect of how art plays into some key imaginaries of belonging and provides a reading of diverse ways of participating in the revolution as an evolving nation-making Sudanese project that emanates from the local and from afar.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. A second part to this article dealing with women and music during the Sudan protests can be read here.

Image Credit: Jakob Reimann on Flickr

Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz lives between Khartoum and London. She holds a Ph.D in Social Anthropology, with a special focus on Medical Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on cultural understandings of health and well-being. She has been following the unfolding upraising in Khartoum since December 2018 and has been documenting the everyday protest practices, focusing specifically on the artistic expressions. She is also a co-researcher with Kasia Grabska in the ISS-funded project on creative practice, mobilities and in development in Sudan.

Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a lecturer/researcher at the ISS and a filmmaker.

Creative Development | Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos by Roy Huijsmans, Katarzyna Grabska and Cathy Wilcock

By ISS Blog Bliss 31 January 20195 October 2020 3424 views

How are belonging, citizenship, and rights contested through creative practices such as music and dance? What role do the creative industry, international cultural institutions, and the mobilities of performing artists play in this? And what is the significance of all this for rethinking development in post-conflict settings such as Sudan and Laos? This article briefly reflects on these questions that are driving a new ISS-funded research project.

Researching development through creative practice

A new research project led by ISS researchers Katarzyna Grabska, Roy Huijsmans, and Cathy Wilcock called Creative Development: Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos seeks to investigate the intersection of migration and creative practice. The project commences in 2019 and involves qualitative, arts-based and ethnographic field research in France, Laos, Sudan, and the UK. This research will contribute to an emerging body of work studying the relations between arts, popular culture, migration, and development.

In development studies, there is some recognition of the role of popular culture in development practice, perhaps most noticeable in research on the phenomenon of ‘celebrities’ as goodwill ambassadors (e.g. David Beckham, Shakira, Angelina Jolie). In migration and refugee studies, the engagement with the arts has been more profound and has gone beyond a focus on the rich and famous, also breaking with a western-centric view of development.

A good example is the collaborative project led by Dave Lumenta at Universitas Indonesia. The project is entitled ‘Performing out of Limbo’. It is a musical/research collaboration between Oromo refugee youth from Ethiopia and musicians, students and academics from Indonesia (see a short YouTube clip here, and a write up here).

Music and dance as acts of citizenship

The project’s conceptualisation of citizenship and belonging draws on the work of Engin Isin. In the social sciences, citizenship is mostly treated as a ‘status’. In their 2008, book ‘Acts of Citizenship, Isin and Neilsen depart from such a view and approach citizenship as an act. Such a conceptualisation of citizenship enables us to rethink ‘who’ can be a citizen based on ‘collective and individual deeds that rupture socio-historical patterns’ (p13).

This approach enables viewing music and dance performances as acts of citizenship, as explored by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú in her article ‘Unfamiliar Acts of Citizenship’. Here she engages with the experiences of young migrants in Ireland and their engagement with hip hop and vernacular languages. Their practices do not fit into conventional categories of belonging based on language use, ethnicity, or nationality, and are better described as processes facilitating ‘creative hybrid refashioning of self’ (p163) through which political identities and relations of belonging are renegotiated. Although these songs, like much hip hop, come with a message, the focus on processes and effects lead us to go beyond a discursive analysis of the lyrics to ask what senses of belonging those involved in these musical practices realised through them.

Creative development and contested acts of national belonging in Laos and Sudan

This research project will build on the work of Ní Mhurchú and others through examining music and dance as acts of citizenship in post-conflict settings. With recent histories of violent internal conflict, followed by regime change Laos and Sudan offer fertile terrain for studying acts of citizenship in and through (re)emerging creative practices.

In both Laos and Sudan, questions of national belonging are delicate matters. Expressions of citizenship are not only regulated through legal practices, but also actively promoted through national education curricula and state-censored media. This indicates that citizenship in these contexts is much more than a matter of status, but also a matter of conduct, and one that comes with a strong national(ist) morality. From such a perspective, it is not difficult to see why a music video by the popular Thai national country singer Lumyai shot in the Lao tourist site of Vang Vieng stirred debate in Laos. Although the lyrics hardly refer to national belonging, other elements of the clip do. The music video is shot in a famous rural Lao location, and in her dance moves Lumyai weaves together elements from the traditional Lam Fong dance with sexually provocative moves. As such, Lumyai transgressed norms about proper (gendered) conduct on Lao soil.

Emplacement and movement in creative development

Due to recent histories of violent conflict, there are significant Lao and Sudanese diaspora, and the diaspora play an active role in the creative scene. Migration, like popular culture, is a transnational phenomenon. Moreover, culture is also transnationalised through international cultural institutions. This is evident from the work of the Institut Français in Laos and in Sudan and the Goethe Institute in Sudan. Culture has always flown, but this is particularly true in the present-day social media landscape. In addition, diaspora networks and international cultural institutions also facilitate the movement of artists and creative development. At the same time, dance and citizenship become acts of citizenship when they are emplaced—that is, when these creative expressions become meaningful in relation to more territorialised relations of belonging. Hence, the research project will pay close attention to the dynamics of mobilities and placemaking in the manifestations of creative development under study. Stay tuned!

On 5 February 2019, the ISS will host a workshop on ‘Moving methods: creative approaches to experiences of displacement, migration, social justice and belonging’.

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a lecturer/researcher at the ISS and a filmmaker.’

Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration.

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