5 lessons learned from our network of innovators
2024 was another impactful year for innovation. The WFP Innovation Network continued to grow, now encompassing 20 country offices with innovation teams or focal points, two regional innovation hubs and a diverse community of 490 WFP Innovation Champions from across 165 duty stations. 12 teams from the Network directly assisted 153,183 people and raised more than US$5.7 million in funding.
By implementing forward-thinking innovations, country office teams drew many lessons that enabled them to learn from successful projects and from those that offered unique challenges, to avoid reinventing the wheel. This will ultimately lead to programme improvement to better serve vulnerable communities. Below are the key lessons that country office and regional office teams learned in 2024.
Catalytic funding lays the groundwork for impact
Many innovative impact businesses active in challenging or humanitarian contexts face barriers to growing their solutions and maximizing their impact. Traditional funding options often do not always cater to the specific needs of innovative business models and entrepreneurs on their journey to scale. This is where catalytic funding becomes important: it provides an initial investment to boost a startup’s growth, helping it reach self-sustainability.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the WFP Regional Innovation Office, in collaboration with the WFP Innovation Accelerator, has mobilized catalytic funding to help innovations reach more than 230,000 people. This type of funding was critical in generating evidence, which in turn unlocked additional resources, advocacy, and partnerships.
A successful example is the Nilus project. Following a successful pilot, Nilus received catalytic funding to expand from Argentina and Mexico into four additional countries: Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador and Peru. Furthermore, the WFP Innovation BRIDGE, an innovative financing mechanism co-managed by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), approved Nilus as its first global investment. This support enabled Nilus to scale its operations and improve access to affordable, nutritious food for millions in Peru.
Programme integration promotes inclusive stakeholder engagement
Collaborating closely with programme and operation teams ensures that innovations are grounded in real-world challenges and aligned with WFP’s strategic goals. This fosters organizational transformation and drives meaningful results beyond dedicated innovation units. In Guatemala and Peru for example, anchoring country-level innovations into WFP programmes and aligning them with national development priorities helps improve traction and enhances scalability potential.
This potential was evidenced with AHEAD, (autonomous humanitarian emergency aid devices); an innovation developed in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) that enhances last-mile delivery by integrating tele-operated capabilities into all-terrain vehicles already in use by WFP. WFP’s Supply Chain division pinpointed real-world needs and deployment sites, while the WFP Innovation Accelerator served as the critical link between all parties. After a successful demonstration in southern Germany in 2024, AHEAD proved the feasibility of tele-operated aid delivery, which is a critical step in deploying it in real humanitarian operations.
In Kenya, the country office worked closely with programme teams. It led training on human-centred design and developed learning tools like the WFP Innovator’s Playbook that helps colleagues across WFP to innovate.
Locally driven innovation strengthens localization
A key lesson from our innovation work in 2024 is that locally driven innovation is essential to advancing localization. By working with local actors to design and implement solutions, we strengthen the relevance, sustainability and ownership of humanitarian and development efforts. WFP defines a locally driven innovation as one that addresses context-specific challenges or opportunities by leveraging people and resources from the implementation area. These initiatives may be led by WFP or by ventures headquartered or operating locally.
In 2024, the WFP Innovation Network managed five regional and 11 country-led innovation programmes. These initiatives provided financial support to 50 local ventures and offered mentorship, resources, innovation support services and other non-monetary assistance to 243 ventures.
On average, 44 percent of innovations supported through the innovation programmes were locally driven. For example, the IGNITE Innovation Hub of Eastern Africa supports local capacity-building efforts like the IGNITE Innovation Challenge. This aligned ventures with local priorities and gained recognition from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Cross-country learning enhances local effectiveness
Cross-country learning significantly enhanced local innovation effectiveness by allowing teams to adapt successful strategies and ideas from other regions to their unique contexts. In Rwanda, the country office has had opportunities to learn from Uganda’s experience in innovation implementation, particularly how to integrate Ignite ventures into WFP programming and support with grant application.
To help support cross-country learning and exchange, in 2024 we created two platforms. The WFP Innovation Database enables staff to discover pioneering innovations, access lessons, connect with innovators and gain key insights. The WFP Innovators’ Playbook, developed jointly with the WFP Kenya and the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office, offers a collection of good practices, tips, tools and templates to help country offices in every step of their innovation processes. These two resources empower country offices through the entire innovation journey, eliminating duplication of effort resulting in greater local innovation effectiveness.
Sustainable partnerships fuel innovation
Sustainable partnerships with governments, academia and the private sector brought critical expertise and resources that fueled innovation and sustainability. Engaging local start-ups was vital in Uganda to address protracted humanitarian challenges through expedited processes. This proved instrumental in driving results-driven innovations during the year. For example, to support the implementation of the NutriCash activity under the Child Sensitive Social Protection program, the country office engaged a start-up Agrigate Company Ltd (Ignite Food systems 2.0 grantee) to enhance agricultural productivity and income for the women groups. This partnership increased farmer’s income from US$93 to US$586, enabling reinvestment in farming and other livelihoods.
The IGNITE Innovation Hub for Eastern Africa observed that investing in local start-ups and ventures can catalyse an average of 10 times the grant funding of the initial investment from impact investors. This shows the significant potential of private sector engagement for innovation work, which is particularly important given the ever-changing nature of humanitarian funding.
In addition to establishing a strong partnership with the private sector, WFP should continue to build strong partnerships with government and research institutions to implement impactful innovation programmes.
2024 has shown the immense value of fostering innovation within WFP’s network. Through catalytic funding, programme integration, locally driven solutions, cross-country learning and sustainable partnerships, WFP has not only improved programme effectiveness but also empowered vulnerable communities to build resilience. These lessons will serve as a foundation for continued growth and impact in the years to come, ensuring WFP remains at the forefront of addressing global hunger with innovative and sustainable solutions.
By Yvonne Ingui
Edited by Lucy Bloxham
The WFP Innovation Accelerator sources, supports and scales high-potential solutions to end hunger worldwide. We provide WFP colleagues, entrepreneurs, start-ups, companies, and non-governmental organizations with access to funding, mentorship, hands-on support, and WFP’s global operations.
Find out more about us: http://innovation.wfp.org.
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