Innovation rooted in humanity

WFP Innovation, through the WFP Innovation Network, enables and drives innovation across the organization. It brings together more than 500 Innovation Champions in over 165 duty stations, 20 dedicated country office innovation teams and two regional innovation hubs, inspiring other countries to amplify their innovation capabilities and impact by setting up dedicated innovation structures. The Innovation Network is currently leading an Innovation Activation initiative aiming for transformative impact, scaled solutions, enhanced operations and unlocked regional potential.

Today, WFP innovators and country offices are the engines of innovation, supported by regional innovation offices and the WFP Innovation Accelerator. From Kenya to Colombia, innovation offices and units are localizing, implementing and scaling new solutions to help end hunger, rooted in community needs. 

The Innovation Network also promotes a culture of creativity and collaboration and provides tailored services to help ideas grow. This network is connected through common digital systems and spaces that connect peers, share knowledge and scale solutions for greater impact.

WFP Kenya Innovation Unit

Rosemary leads the WFP Kenya Innovation Unit, driving new ways of working to strengthen food systems, improve livelihoods and deliver better outcomes for the people we serve. Her and her team always began with a simple question: how can we do better for the people we serve? From pioneering cash transfers through M-PESA to co-creating solutions with local partners, the unit has turned field challenges into innovation labs. They’ve built a method that lets WFP learn fast and scale what works, transforming staff ingenuity into real-world impact. Today, innovation isn’t a department, it’s a mindset shared across WFP in Kenya.

Also operational in: Barbados, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras and Peru

Context: Adriana Nohemí López Orozco is a programme assistant at WFP Guatemala, where she plays a key role in delivering secure, efficient cash-based assistance. Her work focuses on validating participants, managing data systems and implementing digital tools that promote financial inclusion and protect identities.

Challenge: Adriana’s work is especially critical in crisis settings. In 2025, Guatemala faced multiple emergencies, from floods and droughts in rural areas to the reintegration of returning migrants. Many affected people lacked formal identification or access to banking services, making traditional cash delivery methods difficult to deploy quickly. WFP needed a solution that could overcome these barriers without compromising speed or security.

Solution: Rescue Card is a fast-acting, prepaid card linked to WFP’s corporate digital wallet. It works with flexible Know Your Customer requirements, and, working within regulatory channels, overcomes lengthy contracting processes, enabling WFP to deliver assistance within 72 hours. Recipients can use the card immediately in local retail markets, giving them autonomy over their purchases and reducing the risks associated with carrying cash.

In 2025, the card was critical to WFP’s emergency response in Guatemala, where floods and droughts devastated rural communities and disrupted banking systems. Rescue Card enabled thousands of people to meet their food needs after losing assets and livelihoods. It also proved essential for supporting returning migrants, many of whom lacked formal identification. By offering a secure, inclusive way to deliver cash assistance, Rescue Card ensured that some of Guatemala’s most vulnerable people could access food and essentials during periods of acute vulnerability and transition.

Beyond Guatemala, the innovation is showing strong results globally. As of 2025, Rescue Card has reached over 88,000 people across Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Peru, helping more than 10,000 households meet their essential needs. In terms of time saving, country offices saved up to 24 months to provide cash assistance. Once delivered, cards can be activated within minutes. The solution also delivered an average of 70 percent in operational cost savings within the first three months of an emergency operation. In some cases, for example in Haiti, Rescue Card saved up to 85 percent in delivery costs. These savings make the innovation not only fast and inclusive, but also highly efficient.

Adriana was directly involved in rolling out Rescue Card in Guatemala, tailoring its use to meet the needs of disaster-affected communities and migrants in transition. Her work helped ensure that the innovation was not only fast and secure, but also responsive to the realities on the ground.

Context: In Western and Central Africa, delivering food assistance is a daily logistical challenge and humanitarian operations face constant pressure. Yet, WFP has successfully moved over 2.2 million metric tons of food in the past five years; a testament to the resilience and innovation of its supply chain teams. One of the driving forces behind this success is Sedric Zamedjo, a supply chain planning and optimization officer at WFP’s regional office. Sedric leads efforts to transform how WFP plans, anticipates and delivers assistance, making operations smarter, faster and more responsive.

Challenge: Behind this success lies a deeper challenge. WFP’s supply chain is vast and complex, managing thousands of suppliers, coordinating countless delivery routes and moving life-saving assistance across some of the world’s most challenging environments.  

Solution: To overcome the complexity of WFP’s vast supply chain, Sedric and his team helped roll out a suite of digital tools: Prisma, Scout, Route the Meals and Optimus. These tools work together to create an integrated ecosystem for end-to-end supply chain visibility.

They allow teams to forecast demand, plan supply, manage inventory with risk insights and optimize delivery routes - all in real time. This means faster decision-making, better risk anticipation and more efficient delivery of life-saving food assistance, even in the most challenging environments. The goal is to scale these tools across all country offices, streamline system integration and embed predictive analytics into daily operations. By doing so, WFP will be better equipped to save lives today and build resilience for tomorrow.

Learn more about WFP's supply chain
Learn more about Prisma
Against all odds

Also operational in: Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Haiti, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Madagascar, Mozambique, Somalia and Togo.

Context: In Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, many children are returning to in-person schooling after two years of virtual classes. Among them is Kseniia, a student navigating not only the shift back to school but also the realities of war. To ensure safety and continuity in education, the city has built subterranean classrooms within bomb shelters, offering students a secure space to learn and a glimmer of hope for a brighter future.

Challenge: As students head underground to continue their education, ensuring they are nourished and supported becomes critical. One major hurdle is the lack of efficient tools to track and manage school meal programmes. In many under-resourced areas, meal data is still recorded manually on paper, a process that is time-consuming, error-prone and difficult to translate into actionable insights or public reports.

Solution: In 2025, WFP launched the School Connect platform in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine to digitize school meal tracking. It helps schools run more smoothly, improves data accuracy and ensures safe, reliable support for every child. Staff and WFP teams can easily track enrollment, attendance, food deliveries, stock levels and meals served.

Also operational in: Jordan, Palestine and Syria

Context: Building Blocks is the world’s largest blockchain-based humanitarian platform. Developed by WFP for the humanitarian community and operating at scale since 2018, the platform enables multiple organizations to coordinate assistance, ensure fairer outcomes and improve choice and ease of access, further empowering the people being served. Since 2022, Building Blocks has enabled over 80 organizations to deliver efficiency gains by collectively preventing more than USD 270 million in unintended assistance overlap in Ukraine alone, coordinating assistance for 4.8 million households. Leveraging successful deployment in Jordan, Bangladesh and Ukraine, Building Blocks is being operationalized in Syria and Palestine and actively seeks new deployment opportunities and network members.

Challenge: The global humanitarian landscape is increasingly complex. In crisis situations, multiple organizations often provide overlapping support (such as food, healthcare, shelter and/or protection) to the same groups of people, using different systems and processes for programme design and assistance allocation. Without a way to share information among different organizations about who is being assisted and how, some individuals can inadvertently receive more or less than they need. There is a clear need for better coordination to maximize the impact and transparency of humanitarian assistance.

Solution: Building Blocks is a blockchain-based humanitarian platform, developed as an internal innovation by WFP by aggregating the needs of other humanitarian organizations. The platform adapts blockchain technology to meet the unique needs of humanitarian operations, including complex programme designs and multi-organization coordination and collaboration. Building Blocks uses blockchain to assign each person or household a unique technical identifier (i.e., a blockchain account), so different organizations can see what type of assistance(s) someone has already received without sharing personal details, making it easy to avoid unintended overlapping assistance. The platform supports a wide range of assistance types, including cash transfers, food, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and more. By preventing unintended overlap in assistance, this integrated approach helps organizations make the most of available resources and deliver effective and targeted support. 

​​A key feature of Building Blocks is its privacy-by-design approach. Organizations use pseudonymous common identifiers to coordinate assistance and no sensitive personal data (such as names, dates of birth or biometrics) is shared or stored on the system.

An internal innovation from WFP colleagues in headquarter units, Building Blocks began as a 100-person pilot in Pakistan, supported by the WFP Innovation Accelerator’s Sprint Programme. By 2018, it had expanded to Jordan, supporting 106,000 Syrian refugees. After entering the Scale-Up Enablement programme, the platform was operating at scale, reaching over one million refugees in Jordan and Bangladesh. Today, Building Blocks is a WFP corporate solution and the world’s largest humanitarian use of blockchain technology.

Learn more about Building Blocks

Also operational in: Mozambique, Rwanda, South Sudan and Zambia  

Context: In Africa, up to 40 percent of food produced is lost at various stages of the value chain (FAO, 2019). This staggering figure, if addressed, could feed hundreds of millions of people who go to bed hungry each night. In some countries, post-harvest grain losses even exceed total grain imports. These losses result from inefficiencies across the value chain, including poor pre- and post-harvest practices, reliance on traditional outdoor storage, inadequate temperature and humidity control, hygiene issues and limited access to proper enclosed storage due to low incomes among smallholder farmers and aggregators. Amid the global food crisis, boosting local productivity is critical. Reducing post-harvest losses is increasingly recognized as a key strategy to strengthen the resilience of local food supply chains and build more sustainable food systems.

Challenge: Tackling post-harvest loss requires a holistic approach. While supplying smallholders with post harvest loss technologies is essential, broader systemic barriers persist. Many farmers like Belete Abate lack awareness, access or the financial means to adopt existing solutions. At the same time, technology providers hesitate to enter these markets due to concerns about low purchasing power and limited demand. Imported technologies often carry high costs because of taxes and levies, making them even less accessible to smallholders.

Solution: To drive adoption and build a sustainable market, innovation is needed across the value chain. This includes timely equipment delivery, cost-effective extension services, digital data tools and micro-financing. Post-Harvest Loss Ventures (PHLV) plays a key role in this effort. In Ethiopia, WFP supports communities through savings and loan programmes that enable access to credit for income-generating activities beyond farming. These programmes help farmers adopt post-harvest technologies while also providing a critical safety net during emergencies. As a result, farmers are empowered to build resilient livelihoods and contribute to stronger, more secure food systems.

Macro-Level Disaster Risk Financing also operational in: Antigua, Belize, Burkina Faso, Dominica, Fiji, Gambia, Grenada, Jamaica, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Samoa, Somalia, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Sudan, Tonga, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Inclusive Risk Financing also operational in: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cộte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal and Zambia with technical assistance in Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Lesotho, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Context: A decade of civil war has left Syria with destroyed infrastructure, making it one of the most vulnerable countries, with climate shocks now adding to this ongoing crisis. In 2025, the driest winter in 50 years and scorching summer heat waves wiped out nearly all the crops in some areas. Wheat production is expected to fall short by 2.7 million metric tons, while soaring costs for feed and irrigation are putting enormous strain on rural families.

Challenge: Ahmad’s story shows the human impact. Ahmad, a smallholder farmer, lost his entire harvest of wheat and many of his olive trees died from lack of water. With no livestock or crops remaining, he might need to sell a piece of land to pay back loans.

Solution: Globally, WFP is both financing its operations and supporting households to access pre-arranged finance, such as insurance, to respond swiftly when vulnerable communities face climate shocks. These innovative financial instruments allow governments, humanitarian actors, as well as households and small- to medium enterprises to receive payouts when climate thresholds are met - enabling early action and quicker recovery from hazards.

Ahmad’s household was one of 120,000 in Syria to receive cash assistance after the drought hit. This will allow him to buy food and pay off debts, avoiding more drastic, long-term measures to cope, such as selling his land. 

In 2025, WFP also launched the first parametric insurance product in Iraq that will protect vulnerable households from extreme heat and drought as part of WFP’s Inclusive Risk Financing programme, which aims to build resilience and safeguard sustainable livelihoods in the face of climate-related shocks. With the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, WFP piloted the insurance scheme in Karbala and Ninewa provinces, targeting 400 vulnerable households. Following dry conditions during the season, both the drought and heatwave insurance products triggered payouts totalling USD 72,000, helping affected households recover and stabilize their livelihoods. 

WFP’s Disaster Risk Financing tools are now active in 37 countries, helping build resilience in disaster-prone and fragile areas.

Learn more about Disaster Risk Financing
Learn more about Macro-Level Disaster Risk Financing
Learn more about Inclusive Risk Financing 
The five impact pathways of Inclusive Risk Financing

Also operating in: Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan

Context: The Enterprise Deduplication Service (EDS) is a centralized, scalable solution developed to identify and manage duplicate records across WFP’s operational systems. By using photos already collected during beneficiary registration, it maintains a clean, unified dataset, supporting operational efficiency, better decision-making and fairer distribution of assistance. In Mali, EDS has enabled WFP teams to reduce errors, save resources and strengthen trust with the communities served.

Challenge: Beneficiaries are often registered across multiple activities, such as general food distribution, nutrition programmes or food-for-assets. Duplicate entries can result in some households receiving more than needed while others are missed, reducing fairness and efficiency. Staff also require simple, reliable tools to identify duplicates without adding extra steps for beneficiaries.

Solution: Aminata and her team implement AI-powered photo deduplication, comparing existing registration photos across programmes to flag potential duplicates. The system is easy to adopt, minimally intrusive and retains human oversight: flagged matches are reviewed by staff before action is taken. This approach improves accuracy, reduces waste and ensures resources reach the right people faster.

Does AI hold the key to ending hunger?