Waving the flag of innovation around the world

We aim to be catalysts for innovation, bringing the best minds together and amplifying the voices of global game-changers working toward social impact. This month, this brought us around the world to spread the word about innovation’s great potential for ending hunger and achieving the SDGs.

At the Greentech Festival, we brought four innovators on stage for a competitive Climate x Hunger Pitch Slam, where they showcased their innovative solutions to reach a world without hunger. Thanks to Claudia Müller, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture for her inspiring opening remarks. Special congratulations to Wanja Maryann, representing Rebug to Debug, who won the Hunger Pitch Slam and earned a spot on the main stage!

Also at Greentech Festival, we welcomed innovators and partners to our panel “Will Foodtech Save Us?”. Through this panel, we learned that the path to food security truly lies in our collaborative efforts across various sectors.

Across the Atlantic, our team joined the Science, Technology and Innovation Forum at UN HQ in New York. Alongside partners and innovators from the Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator, we discussed innovation’s role in emergency humanitarian response.

Other highlights include discussing the transformative potential of AI and innovative finance for improving food security at DigiSustain and Bernhard Kowatsch moderating a food innovation panel at the World Economic Forum Global Innovation Conference.

These events are critical opportunities to highlight the innovation’s transformative impact in humanitarian and development contexts. Through them, we can build stronger connections between the field and system-level change. We’ll continue waving the flag of innovation and using our platform to draw attention to innovative solutions from around the world.

Innovation Updates

• The SDGx team delivered five workshops in Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Brindisi, Accra and Panama City for the UN Humanitarian Response Depot as part of a Global Partners Meeting. We leveraged human-centered design to collaboratively identify and prioritize humanitarian challenges in supply chain preparedness and response. Then, we generated new ideas and opportunity areas to address these challenges. Next, we will shortlist these ideas and design a programme to address them.
• Nine innovation teams joined us online for the Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa bootcamp. They developed and refined their solutions and business models with our expert facilitators and robust, built-for-purpose bootcamp model.
• The second edition of the Kofi Annan Award for Innovation received more than 800 applications. We delved into how we effectively source applications for innovative solutions across our programmes.
• WFP Nutrition, with support from the WFP Innovation Accelerator, is launching CODA 2.0. It is a digital tool and full-service solution designed to simplify nutrition programme decision-making, monitoring and reporting. It digitizes national and programme guidelines and records individual data.
• Locally-led solutions supported through our innovation programmes are powerful tools for addressing global food crises, reports SciDev.net.

Get involved

Closing 14 June 2024 | Apply with your sustainable energy solution to the Energy for Food Security programme.

13 June 18:30-20:00 PDT | Join us at the WFP Humanitarian Ventures Accelerator Pitch Event.

Rolling applications | Apply with your SDG2 solution to the WFP Innovation Challenge.