AI is being used by the World Food Programme to promote humanitarian behaviours across the board.
The World Food Programme (WFP) and its collective attitude have been fashioned by decades of imaginative humanitarian response, nurturing the persistence, ingenuity, and problem-solving that are now driving its digital transformation.
WFP uses innovation and technology to improve emergency response, scale-up assistance, and give people in need more control and choice.
There are numerous ways that technology can aid the World Food Programme’s fight against hunger, such as optimising supplies for school meal programmes and training for smallholder farmers through simple apps or improving emergency response by utilising chatbots for two-way communication with people affected by the crisis.
WFP cultivates strategic connections with companies and organisations that provide pro-bono access to industry-standard software, products, and professional skills in order to fully exploit technology, innovation, and data.
New technology must be deployed ethically, and digital solutions must be based on humanitarian values to prevent exposing people to additional hazards as a result of our actions. WFP aims to address the concerns of data privacy and security by incorporating due diligence and accountability into our operations and collaborating with partners across the UN system to exchange best practices and recommendations.
WFP’s WFP Innovation Accelerator in Munich, Germany, uses Silicon Valley-style start-up tactics to inspire innovative thinking.
The Innovation Accelerator was created in response to the success of WFP’s first fundraising app, ShareTheMeal, to proactively discover, support, and grow high-potential ideas to end global hunger and accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals. It connects private sector IT experts and start-up entrepreneurs with WFP’s 21,000 personnel worldwide and global operations in over 80 countries, leveraging their knowledge and strategies to strengthen humanitarian assistance projects.
As co-leader of the UN Innovation Network, the Accelerator also shares its learnings with other actors in the UN innovation ecosystem, as well as with NGOs and private sector innovation entities through its innovative services programme.
Since its inception in 2015, the Accelerator has funded over 100 projects in 46 countries, with 14 of them scaling up to touch 5.5 million people by 2021 as part of WFP’s humanitarian field activities.
In 2021, the Accelerator received US$163 million in co-funding for innovative projects, and it was named to Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators and Most Innovative Companies (Non-Profit) lists.
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