WFP Innovation BRIDGE

Many innovative impact businesses active in challenging or humanitarian contexts face barriers to grow their solutions and maximize their impact. Grants are often constrained in size and irregular in nature. Conventional financial instruments, like bank loans, may come with prohibitive costs of capital and unsuitable terms and conditions. Traditional funding options often do not cater to the specific needs of innovative business models and do not provide the support entrepreneurs need on their journey to scale.

WFP Innovation BRIDGE helps impact businesses scale by unlocking market-based solutions for Zero Hunger and related Sustainable Development Goals. 

It provides flexible, risk-tolerant, affordable loans and guarantees to make the most of available grant funding to support impact-driven businesses aiming to scale. This reduces risks for other investors and encourages more investment, offering crucial scaling capital and promoting business growth and stability.

WFP Innovation BRIDGE was launched in September 2023, in partnership with United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and invests globally, leveraging WFP’s presence in over 120 countries and territories.

In July 2022, WFP partnered with the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to leverage each other's complementary mandates and capabilities to collaboratively design new funding mechanisms aimed at achieving Zero Hunger. The combination of WFP’s global footprint and expertise in food systems, and UNCDF’s investment instruments is a prime example of UN agencies using their comparative advantages to work towards the achievement of shared goals.

• WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving and changing lives globally; bringing life-saving relief in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impacts of climate change.
• UNCDF assists low-income countries in the development of their economies by supplementing existing sources of capital assistance by means of grants and loans.

WFP BRIDGE is the first initiative of the WFP-UNCDF partnership. This catalytic funding facility will use grant funding to invest in innovative impact businesses (both for- and non-profit organizations with revenue generating business models, not internal UN initiatives) contributing to the Zero Hunger agenda, via concessional loans and guarantees. Wherever possible, WFP BRIDGE will co-invest with, and de-risk private sector investors to release additional funding flows into the humanitarian and development sector.

WFP BRIDGE embodies WFP’s commitment to finding new, innovative, and diverse ways to fundraise, while forging new public and private sector partnerships for Zero Hunger and the Sustainable Development Goals, and ultimately increasing WFP’s impact per dollar. 

WFP Innovation BRIDGE is the initial funding facility under the ‘WFP BRIDGE’ initiative, launched in September 2023. WFP BRIDGE’s scalable architecture allows WFP to add further focused facilities, transforming how WFP can engage with businesses and funders for more sustainable food systems. WFP Innovation BRIDGE will play a catalytic role in attracting greater investments into the target innovative impact businesses, primarily from the past, present, and potential portfolio of the WFP Innovation Accelerator and other WFP innovation hubs and units.

WFP Rwanda BRIDGE launched in November 2023, targeting agriculture value chain businesses and focussing on youth job creation. WFP Rwanda BRIDGE aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and positively impact local food systems, with a focus on youth and women.

Innovative impact businesses that might benefit from WFP Innovation BRIDGE will also be provided with tailored investment readiness and business strategy support from the WFP Innovation Accelerator to prepare them to best leverage the potential financing they may receive and to attract additional investments from external investor partners.

The facility's first investment is a concessional loan to Nilus, a pioneering food systems technology company that operates as a digital retailer for underserved populations. The loan will enable Nilus to scale in Peru, making food more affordable and accessible for low-income communities by serving 2,500+ community kitchens, canteens and low-income restaurants and generating 20 percent+ in food cost savings for 150,000+ people by 2028.