Ms Grau, can you please tell us more about the Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator Programme?
Barbara Grau: The Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator is a multi-donor programme created to drive innovation towards addressing pressing global challenges requiring humanitarian action. The ultimate goal is to improve the lives of vulnerable communities.
The World Food Programme launched a call for projects in February 2023, inviting entrepreneurs from across the world to apply for a place on a virtual innovation bootcamp and the opportunity to apply to a 6 to 12-month acceleration programme offering mentorship, access to a global network and equity-free funding.
What is your role in the programme?
The programme received over 350 applications from ventures willing to implement projects, primarily in Africa or Asia but also in countries elsewhere including Ukraine. An innovation committee was set up to evaluate the most promising ventures and select the participants for the innovation bootcamp and the pitching event in Luxembourg. I represent Luxinnovation in the innovation committee, which also includes representatives of the WFP, the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Austrian Development Agency, Prado Power, Vaxiglobal, UNHCR and the Tech Hub ICRC.
We used five main evaluation criteria: innovativeness, impact, traction, business model and team.
We selected a total of 16 ventures at two different maturity levels: 8 early-stage ventures and 8 in the scale-up stage. We used five main evaluation criteria: innovativeness, impact, traction, business model and team. We also took other factors such as location, cohort diversity, gender balance and female representation into account, in order to have a balanced cohort.
The selected companies will now pitch their projects during the event on 29 June. Half of them (four on each maturity level) will be receiving grants to implement their projects and will benefit from the support of a coach during the acceleration programme. There are many very interesting projects and I encourage everyone interested to participate in the event online.
What type of humanitarian innovation solutions can we expect to see during the pitching session?
Participants will discover technology-oriented solutions targeting the thematic focus areas of the programme: health, water and sanitation, energy, information, education, emergency telecommunications and coordination services. The solutions originate from the fields of artificial intelligence and data science, spacetech, healthtech, and supply chain and logistics.
The main objective of the pitching session is to connect the selected ventures with funding, knowledge and networks that may help them move along their pathway to scale in a sustainable way and to promote new private-public collaborations in the mentioned fields. It would be great to attract funding from multiple partners and enable more resources to humanitarian innovation ventures.
What did you find particularly interesting when evaluating these ventures?
I am very keen on innovation and especially when it is linked to a greater purpose. This is the case of sustainable, social and societal projects. This programme is a wonderful opportunity for investors to be part of innovation projects bringing technology and hope to areas under development. It has been a pleasure and an honour for me to take part in such an acceleration programme.
Do you see a business potential as well as a humanitarian dimension in the solutions to be presented?
Absolutely. The main objective of the solutions is to target a specific issue by implementing a certain technology. And – as is the case with all ventures – a true business potential is needed to enable their success and long-term sustainability.
Photo: © Luxinnovation/Marion Dessard