Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration

The Living Off-Grid Food and Infrastructure Collaboration (LOGIC) is a multi-country, multi-institution research collaboration led by the Institute of Development Studies, UK, and including experts in urban research from Africa and Asia. Partners are the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, the University of Ghana, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and the Colombo Urban Lab in Sri Lanka.

The LOGIC research is designed to help improve the lives of the poorest residents of cities in Africa and Asia by focusing on how they are meeting their basic needs and accessing infrastructure, particularly when they are living 'off-grid'. The project covers five main types of infrastructure - water, sanitation, energy, transport, and communications. The research focuses on one important way of understanding whether and how basic needs are being met: access to and the availability of sufficient, diverse, and nutritious diets. The LOGIC team studied the social and material systems that drive food and infrastructure access across five cities, three in Africa (Tamale, Ghana; Mossel Bay, South Africa; Harare, Zimbabwe) and two in Asia (Bengaluru, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka).LOGIC is funded by UK Research and Innovation.