The United Nations World Food Programme Innovation Accelerator together with the WFP Tanzania Country Office will explore how innovations can be a game changer after COVID-19 recovery as we work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Hosts: The World Food Programme and the Government of Tanzania through its agency, the Tanzania Food, and Nutrition Center (TFNC) responsible for overseeing all food and nutrition programmes in Tanzania.

Speakers:

Regina Schmidt, Head of Innovation Projects, WFP Innovation Accelerator

Sarah Gordon-Gibson, WFP Tanzania Country Director

Dr. Ladislaus Kasankala, Director of the Tanzania Food & Nutrition Center

Maggie Schmitz, Acting Division Chief, Private Sector Engagement, Diaspora and Innovation at USAID - Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

The Masterclass will be a combination of lessons learned on how an enabling innovation ecosystem can help new ideas take hold and scale up to support the achievement of the SDGs. We will demonstrate these lessons through real-world projects, including:

  • Community Inclusion Currency, which aims to create and circulate local credit systems as a form of community-driven support network using simple feature phones connected to blockchain distributed ledgers in Kenya. Speaker: Shaila Agha, Director 
  • ImaraTech, which brings mechanization to smallholder farmers in Tanzania by locally manufacturing agricultural equipment. Imara’s first product is a mobile Multi-Crop Threshing (MCT) machine, which threshes 75 times faster than traditional methods. Speaker: Elliot Avila, Co-founder of ImaraTech
  • Sanku, which provides an internet enabled food fortification device for small mills in Africa, from which 3 million people have benefitted so far. We will highlight the lessons learned from scaling in Tanzania, to the ongoing expansion into Kenya. Speaker: Felix Brooks-Church, Co-founder of Sanku
  • EMPACT, which has positively impacted 76,000 people since 2016, providing digital and soft skills training to young refugees and disadvantaged youth in Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, and Zimbabwe, enabling them to build better livelihoods powered by their skills and talents. Speakers: Elisa Molena, EMPACT Project Manager; Ian Mwangi, EMPACT participant who now works for WFP

Key Dates:

Innovation Accelerator Masterclass: Wednesday May 4, 9.00 am EDT. Register here via Zoom.

STI Forum: Thursday May 5 - Friday May 6, 9.00 am - 6.00 pm EDT