What we do
Our four core areas of focus
Enablement Programme
Programme
Innovations
Services
Enabling the best
innovations to scale
Scaling innovations is a critical component of ending world hunger by 2030. Through the Innovation Accelerator’s Scale-up Enablement Programme, a dedicated team delivers tailored services that leverage the Accelerator’s expertise, access and network, to exponentially scale the most impactful innovations to meet this goal.
In 2020, the Scale-up Enablement portfolio grew to 14 projects, up from eight the year before. Three new entrants to the programme were fully external start-ups that came through the WFP Innovation Accelerator Sprint Programme. The Scale-up Enablement Programme has continued to develop its methodology to bring innovations to scale. Critical to this process is an early-stage tailored assessment workshop that provides an opportunity to identify gaps and design a clear path to scale among stakeholders that includes a project roadmap, milestones, roles and responsibilities.
To support this work of scaling innovations, a high priority in 2020 was the creation of a thriving innovation community, given its potential to amplify and localize innovation. The WFP Innovation Community comprises three distinct elements: Field and Regional Innovation Hubs, Innovation Champions Community and Internal Innovation Services.
In 2020, WFP established new Innovation Hubs in Kenya and Jordan. In Kenya, the WFP Innovation Hub for Eastern Africa secured US$ 3.2 million in funding from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The hub launched two innovation programmes — a Bootcamp and a Sprint Programme — in collaboration with the Accelerator and established a partnership with the Hult Prize to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Champions Community
In September 2020, the Accelerator launched the WFP Innovation Champions Community. This community empowers WFP staff to become agents for change, driving innovation within WFP and accelerating solutions for hunger.
With a personalized approach, the community has welcomed 142 new WFP Innovation Champions. The members represent 53 nationalities, are located in 44 duty stations across 31 different countries, and bring an incredible diversity of expertise and field experience to this thriving community.
Services
The WFP Innovation Accelerator established this pillar to support WFP Business Units and Country Offices in strategic innovation integration and special projects. Faced with COVID-19 and travel restrictions, the team developed an online model for innovation workshops. It was tested through two remote workshops for South-South and Triangular Cooperation with over 60 participants dialling in from different locations. The lessons stemming from this experience have resulted in a leaner, scalable model for this internal innovation offering, one readily adaptable to multiple applications.
Building Blocks
Cloud to Street
CODA Services
Dalili
EMPACT
Farm to Market Alliance
H2Grow
Log.ie
PLUS School Meals
Post-Harvest Loss Reduction
PRISM
ShareTheMeal
Sanku
BioAnalyt
Preparing innovators for the journey to scale
Before innovations even get to the Sprint phase, the sourcing and bootcamp process helps equip innovators to maximize impact. The team puts thought and care into every activity to achieve the best results for projects — providing value at every stage of the pipeline.
The Accelerator runs an annual Innovation Challenge, utilizing our growing network of Innovation Hubs, partners, and champions to spread the word to reach the most innovative startups globally. In 2020, one of our Innovation Challenges brought in 793 applications from 95 countries.
Each innovation undergoes a detailed matching process to ensure that the proposed solution addresses an existing food security need identified by WFP Country Offices.
The Innovation Bootcamp is an intensive journey to help teams propel their innovations and prepare a pilot plan. The curriculum is tailored to the needs, stage and innovation type of each team, based on human-centred design and lean startup methodologies. Teams are provided with facilitators, mentors and pitch training to ideate, refine and communicate their solutions.
Innovators are paired with carefully curated experts and mentors leveraging the Accelerator’s global network to help them understand the problem in depth, and hone their product, pitch, and strategy.
Innovators have the opportunity to showcase their ideas at widely attended Pitch Events; some receiving additional contributions and interest from the extensive WFP Innovation Accelerator network.
Sprinting innovations
from idea to impact
2020 was a year of design and growth, as the WFP Innovation Accelerator team pivoted their signature Sprint Programme to the new realities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Sprint Programme is an intense six-month acceleration programme to help innovators and start- ups reach proof-of-concept and develop prototypes ready for implementation. Over the course of the programme, innovation teams have access to a diverse range of mentors and experts, results-driven programming, and US$ 100,000 in funding and hands on support from an experienced project manager to design and test their ideas quickly — honing their innovations along the way.
In 2020, this process successfully occurred in a fully-remote environment, testing the creativity and innovation of both the WFP Innovation Accelerator team and the innovators they work with. In 2020, the team received over 1,280 applications from 115 countries, overall. Of this number, 19 new projects went on to receive funding and technical support, growing the impact of the portfolio and pool of future scalable innovations.
Agri-Wallet
Agri-Wallet is a sustainable supply chain- finance service for farmers, off-takers and agro-dealers that provides affordable finance to farmers, “earmarked” for income- generating agricultural activities.
Child Growth Monitor
Child Growth Monitor is developing a digital tool to measure malnutrition in children under the age of 5.
Circular Food Assistance
Circular Food Assistance leverages waste management processes within Cox’s Bazar refugee camp to create livelihood opportunities for the Rohingya community.
Cockpit
Cockpit is a dashboard designed to provide WFP field staff with timely access to automated data analyses to optimize school feeding programming.
Decapolis
Decapolis provides a traceability platform for proving the safety and quality of food for food producers, farmers, and regulatory agencies worldwide.
DEFAST
DEFAST is a fecal sludge treatment plant that transforms human waste into safe fertilizer and cooking briquettes in refugee settings.
Electro Methanogenic Reactors
Electro-Methanogenic Reactors (EMR) is a bio-digesting eco-fuel project.
e-Shop
e-Shop is an online food ordering and delivery system available on Android, iOS and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).
Fenik
Fenik units are low-cost, off-grid, mobile evaporative refrigerators that run on water.
Annapurti GrainATM
To ensure efficient and effective distribution of food grains at the last mile, WFP India has developed Annapurti GrainATM.
GrainMate
GrainMate is a low cost grain moisture meter.
Groasis
Groasis supports smallholder farmers with a simple and inexpensive technology to grow productive trees.
Hello Tractor
Hello Tractor connects tractor owners with smallholder farmers.
Humanitarian Topographic Atlas
Humanitarian Topographic Atlas (HTA) creates high-quality, detailed, and up-to-date topographic maps.
HungerMapLIVE
HungerMapLIVE leverages the power of big data and predictive analytics to track and predict food security in over 90 countries.
The Last Mile Ecosystem
The Last Mile Ecosystem wants fresh food to travel less miles.
MEZA
Meza is a collaboration between WFP’s Nutrition Division and Charitable Analytics International (CAI).
NINAYO
NINAYO empowers smallholder farmer groups, offering them more affordable agricultural inputs.
NutriIndia
NutriIndia is a monitoring and e-learning app to provide training on hygiene and nutrition for WFP’s school meal cooks.
Optimus
Optimus is an optimization tool developed by the WFP Supply Chain team.
Pesitho ECOCA
Pesitho’s ECOCA stove is a compact, efficient e-cooker that uses solar energy to replace wood fuel.
Producers Direct
Producers Direct-Digital Cooperatives is a tool powered by blockchain technology to create dynamic digital cooperatives.
Retail in a Box
Retail in a Box is a solution that enables a faster transition from in-kind food assistance to cash-based assistance.
Roambee
Roambee provides an on-demand, real-time shipment monitoring service which provides insights, predictability and efficiency in logistics.
Saving Grains
Saving Grains aims to create free markets for hermetic bags in Ethiopia.
SHAPES
SHAPES is a platform that simulates the impact of negative shocks on household income and the local economy.
SheCan
SheCan is a digital financing platform that enables private donors to support gender-transformative financial inclusion.
Thrive Agric
Thrive Agric is helping smallholder farmers obtain the best inputs and machinery for their farms.
Support to WFP Country Offices
Given the strong track record of the WFP Innovation Accelerator in sourcing and supporting innovative solutions for the whole WFP, the Lebanon Country Office solicited support from the Innovation Accelerator to set up its new Food Systems Grant Facility (FSGF) to support the rehabilitation of Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the Beirut port explosion in August 2020. The support provided to MSMEs through the FSGF is expected to increase their business efficiency and competitiveness in the medium term, thereby improving the food security and resilience of food system actors in Lebanon to economic shocks and stresses.
- Design support packages for beneficiaries of the FSGF
- Design selection process and criteria of beneficiaries of the FSGF
- Identify components of Lebanon’s Food Systems to support
- Follow-up mechanisms to track the impact of the FSGF on the selected MSMEs
Exploring game-changing
frontier innovations
Frontier innovations are the first stage in the innovation pipeline at the WFP Innovation Accelerator. The Frontier Innovations team actively seeks new ways of delivering humanitarian assistance by exploring cutting-edge technologies and ideas. In collaboration with partners such as the German Space Agency (DLR), Google, and Oxford Rhodes AI Lab, as well as a plethora of high- tech collaborators, the Frontiers team examines complex problems ranging from automated mapping and evaluation of damage after natural and anthropogenic disasters to how remote-piloted vehicles might support the delivery of assistance into complex environments such as live conflict.
In 2020, the Frontiers team focused much of its attention on blockchain, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and moonshot innovation.
In 2020, the WFP Innovation Accelerator procured an amphibious all-terrain vehicle and deployed it for the AHEAD project at the German Space Agency (DLR) premises. The research for the project kicked off with an official partnership between DLR and WFP in October 2020.
The Atrium is an online community platform that is being tested as a way to stimulate learning, collaboration and innovation around blockchain applications across the United Nations agencies.
Recognizing that the transportation time from the Djibouti port to WFP warehouses in Ethiopia could be significantly improved, Blocks for Transport aims to create a decentralized, collaborative supply chain platform that allows for the authorization, sharing, and distribution of humanitarian aid in East Africa for WFP and its partners. The blockchain-powered platform for the humanitarian supply chain will provide real-time insights that mitigate issues regarding visibility, compliance and fleet management.
Seeing the need to address the problems faced by the unbanked, the Frontiers team looked for innovative solutions. The problem statement arose from WFP’s very own EMPACT project: how to send international payments to beneficiaries in Kenya who are unable to open bank accounts and access online payment platforms? To find the solution, the team worked with 40 Kenyan university students and are now exploring pilots in 2021 with a number of NGOs and organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the work of digitizing beneficiary interactions and exploring new opportunities to provide them with greater agency and control over their data via digital remote-registration. The Frontiers team supported WFP’s SCOPE division in designing an initial service structure to be piloted in Lebanon to support the crisis response.
A lack of on-the-ground information at the start of a humanitarian crisis is a major obstacle to a quick, effective response. In collaboration with Google AI, SKAI uses AI to analyze satellite images to automatically assess damage post disasters. It drastically speeds up the process of extracting insights from the ground, and enables speedy and accurate emergency response. SKAI was utilized by WFP to conduct a damage assessment of the August 2020 Beirut explosion, Ethiopia Tigray Conflict, and Fiji Cyclone Ana. SKAI is also now being integrated into WFP’s GIS toolkits.
The Informal Settlement Mapping tool, developed in collaboration with the Oxford Rhodes AI Lab, uses AI to analyze satellite images to identify vulnerable neighborhoods in urban areas at scale. One month after the prototype was developed, the WFP Tanzania Country Office used it to locate informal settlements in the Namanga area of Dar es Salaam. The tool is currently being improved and expanded to map all cities in sub-Saharan Africa.
In collaboration with Omdena, the Frontiers team explored the application of AI and data science to build a disaster relief planning tool that helps WFP design the relief package required to support cyclone-stricken areas. The tool helps WFP pre-position and ship aid to affected areas as soon as a disaster strikes instead of waiting for the ground assessment. The tool was built by 40 data scientists based on the problem statement provided by WFP using open data sources on the Omdena platform.
COVID-19 disrupted the traditional way of collecting programmatic dietary data in-person, directly from beneficiaries based in remote areas. Without this primary data, it became challenging for WFP to assist the Government of Ethiopia in co-developing effective and fact based, nutrition sensitive social protection programmes. This year, the Frontiers team began supporting WFP Ethiopia in developing an open-sourced AI-powered voice-based dietary survey tool that could be more cost efficient and provide a higher quality of responses from both quantitative and qualitative data from vulnerable populations that speak languages underrepresented in existing commercial AI-tools.
In search of bold solutions that have the potential to solve food system challenges in megacities by 2030, the Frontiers team launched WFP-X, with the aim of creating 100 innovative ideas in 100 days. The first cohort of the program focused on Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Providing a platform for
innovation services
WFP has long provided services to the wider humanitarian community, supporting partners with logistics, engineering, digital identity management, cash-based transfers and emergency telecommunications. In 2019, the WFP Innovation Accelerator built on that history to provide innovation services to external partners for the first time, driving progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The team offers a platform of innovation services to accelerate impact-driven ventures around the world and strengthen the innovation ecosystem within the UN, NGOs, foundations and private sector organizations.
The Innovation Services team designs and delivers acceleration programmes, innovation journeys and ecosystem building activities. In 2020, the team coached 81 teams and engaged over 500 audience members during their highly successful virtual pitch events.
PROGRAMMES
The team works with partners to address complex challenges by immersing early stage and transition to scale projects in customized six to twelve month innovation journeys. Their programmes help organizations tackle complex problems using new mindsets and skills, while providing sprint support to design, test, and scale innovations. By providing access and exposure to a mentor network, potential partners and funders, as well as the wider humanitarian community, teams are able to receive long-term guidance and support. For example, in 2020 the team delivered two custom acceleration programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Health Campaign Effectiveness Challenge which included an innovation bootcamp, pitch event, as well as sprint support.
Experiences
The team designs and facilitates innovation experiences to develop or advance solutions to specific challenges. Innovation teams practice new ways of working using open innovation, human-centred design and entrepreneurial frameworks. They also convene stakeholders in co-creation sessions to help organizations make sense of emerging trends and design new initiatives. An innovation experience can also be part of a custom acceleration programme. Innovation experiences range from one-hour, to week-long experiences, examples are a custom innovation bootcamp that will be delivered to MIT Solve’s Maternal and Newborn Health Challenge, or the strategy labs delivered to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Transition to Scale teams.
Experiences
The team offers capacity building services to internal and external partners to help embed innovation into the core of their work. With new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the team designed and implemented new ways of working and collaborating online. They now offer Virtual Facilitation Trainings to train other organizations in the latest virtual facilitation tools and skills that will allow them to continue enabling innovation in an interactive and engaging way. In 2020, the team upskilled WFP and UNDSS colleagues on virtual facilitation techniques, and provided human-centred design basic experiential training to the WFP Innovation Champions Community.
How do we work
with our partners?
Over the past two years, the WFP Innovation Accelerator collaborated with UNFPA’s Innovation Fund to support 17 teams in designing, prototyping and testing bold solutions to help accelerate access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and to end preventable maternal deaths. In 2020, the team supported nine Country Offices’ teams to develop digital and non-digital solutions to help end preventable maternal deaths. Teams completed user research, built and tested prototypes and planned for financial sustainability with the help of their WFP coaches.
“Working closely with the WFP Innovation Accelerator for the last 2 years has been an incredible experience and innovation journey for UNFPA and our country teams involved in our sexual and reproductive health sprint challenges. The support and exchange with WFP and experts in design thinking, frontier tech, storytelling, prototyping, and business development have made a huge difference in the way we think and approach innovation. By bringing together the best and brightest innovators between our entities, UNFPA teams were able to think like start-ups and take their innovations to the next level.”
Since December 2019, the WFP Innovation Accelerator has supported over 55 Innovators as part of the Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge to solve the most pressing humanitarian challenges within water and sanitation, energy, health, and life-saving information in conflict zones. In 2020, the team successfully adapted their support programs for Cohort 1 innovators to a virtual experience, while designing and launching a second virtual program for Cohort 2 innovators. Building on learnings from the first cohort, they now offer monthly mentor days, where mentors connect with innovators regularly to support their projects.
“It was an easy decision to continue collaborating with the WFP Innovation Accelerator another year to support a second group of innovators addressing humanitarian challenges. The team helps us give tailored advice to the 55 teams that we support through the Humanitarian Grand Challenge program. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WFP team were able to easily pivot towards a fully online innovator support experience.“
Gates Foundation
Since June 2019, the WFP Innovation Accelerator has collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to deliver innovation journeys for 38 teams working on innovative solutions on topics such as vaccine demand, effective health campaigns, and water, sanitation and hygiene. In 2020, the team built a strong global health community where all teams can come together to connect, share learnings and address challenges together. The value of having an ecosystem available was especially useful for the two new cohorts that joined in 2020.
While we initially selected the WFP Accelerator because they stood out amongst our partners in many aspects, we have maintained this relationship because the team continues to excel by consistently going above and beyond. The events of this year have further proven an ability to seamlessly adapt, creatively pivot, and exceed goal expectations. After three successful in-person bootcamps we can now add to that list an incredible first virtual bootcamp experience with another close on its heels. We are beyond grateful to work with a partner who embraces looking at the bigger picture and assessing how we can be more innovative, bold, and impactful.”
The Accelerator collaborates closely with other United Nations agencies and offers support in capacity building, innovation bootcamps as well as knowledge sharing. For example, in March 2020, the team supported the World Health Organization, among other actors such as the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology, UNAIDS and UNICEF, in launching the Reboot Health & Well-being Challenge. The challenge encouraged young people from around the world to develop solutions to one of the most urgent health challenges for the next decade: Keeping young people safe.