The Living Off-Grid and Infrastructure Collaboration (LOGIC) launches its new website today, exploring the relationship between infrastructure, food security and nutrition across five cities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
LOGIC researchers found many examples of food’s fundamental dependency on infrastructure, including water, sanitation, electricity, transport and markets. Food security and nutrition are dependent on public services and infrastructure. The twin food and fuel crisis that has affected many of the world’s poor demonstrate the link between energy costs and infrastructure and people’s ability to spend time cooking. This will be a familiar idea in many contexts, for example, with households switching to cheaper-to-run rice cookers to save energy costs.
This month, at the 52nd Plenary Session of the Committee on World Food Security, researchers from the LOGIC project and the IDS-convened Food Equity Centre will present on bringing together urban and food justice. This official side event will convene members of two High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition report teams, along with speakers from academia, civil society and from within the UN system, to forge a common agenda for urban food justice.
Presentations will advocate for building a common agenda across the CFS workstreams on inequality and urban and peri-urban food systems.
You can register to attend the event online and in-person here.
Key messages from the Living Off-Grid and Infrastructure Collaboration
The LOGIC project focused on five cities that are all undergoing significant changes to their demographics and their diets. More people are moving to cities in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and there is a concerted drive to invest in urban infrastructure. However, this investment is not translating into stability and food security for marginalised populations living in informal settlements, or even in the state-developed resettlement areas.
You can find out more about the LOGIC project in their new website, which features key messages and illustrated video stories from each of the cities studied.
Bengaluru (India)
Households spend above 40% of their income on food, and infrastructure access takes over 2 hours every day. Residents in low-income neighbourhoods plan their day around precarious and interrupted water supplies, waiting then rushing to collect water for their households.
Colombo (Sri Lanka)
Working-class poor families have been feeling the impact of repeated shocks since the pandemic and subsequent economic crises. Electricity tariffs increased by 75% in August 2022, and by 66% in February 2023.
Dzivarasekwa Extension – DZ (Zimbabwe)
Food prices in DZ are 30% higher than in most parts of Harare.
Mossel Bay (South Africa)
In Growing Hope settlement, 560 households share 1 tap, and there is one toilet per 40 households.
Tamale (Ghana)
65% of households studied rely heavily on fuelwood and charcoal for food preparation because electricity is too expensive.
Key contacts
