Start date
End date
Location
Wijnhaven, Turfmarkt 99, 2511 DC, Den Haag Three workshops:
- Frugality and digital access to basic needs: inclusion or exclusion? (Digital)
Within wider debates on sustainability and digitalization, frugal innovation (FI) scholars largely assume that digital technologies are important for FI in realising sustainable development outcomes. However, at the same time the challenge of digital exclusion arises, implying reduced access to basic needs. This workshop aims to explore the linkages between digitalisation, frugal innovation and access to basic services. Thereto, we conceptualize digital technologies as and within frugal innovations to explore challenges and opportunities regarding affordable access to basic services in the Global South as well as in the Global North.
- Frugality in food provisioning: the practices of intermediaries navigating scarcity (Agro-Food)
In this mini-workshop we will pitch our recent work related to the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) and explore how we can further incorporate ideas of different ICFI stakeholders. Large groups of people in the Global South depend on local agri-food chains for their food and nutrition security. Resource-constrained small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the so-called “hidden middle” of these chains play important roles in aggregating, processing, and distributing food products. We use the concept of frugality to discover how these actors handle the conundrum between providing affordable and nutritious food to low-income consumers and simultaneously rewarding smallholder producers. We aim to use these insights to co-create perspectives for action and policy.
- The frugal use of digital platforms in informal settlements: a case study of Mathare, Nairobi (Urban)
The use of digital platforms increases rapidly, also in informal settlements. We find that informal settlers mainly use basic functionalities of free platforms. The poorest of the poor use the digital payment platform M-Pesa to receive gifts on a dumb phone, while others also use digital platforms to among others look for work, (informally) buy and sell products or access micro credit. We argue that digital platforms are used in a frugal manner, but not all opportunities are met. At the same time, new inequalities emerge. How can frugality help us to benefit all informal settlers – reducing the digital divide - and to use digital platforms for a broader set of initiatives to improve quality of life?
