A small milestone and recognition we achieved in Jordan!

Great news from Khalid Hashi, an innovator we’ve been proud to support over the years!
The Obama Foundation has just announced that Khalid will join its eighth cohort of Obama Scholars — a group of 11 emerging leaders from around the world who will participate in the program at Columbia University in New York City.

As StartupBlink’s Ecosystem Partner, Somali Response Innovation Lab is happy to share that Somalia reclaims its spot in the Global Top 100 Startup Ecosystem, ranked by StartupBlink in 2025. Somalia now ranks 13th place in Africa and 4th in Eastern Africa!

SomRIL received the Award “Best Accelerator Ecosystem” from StartupBlink recognising Somalia's top performance in the number of accelerators among the seed African ecosystems.

The SomRIL continued our partnership with Startup Blink, so share our data to showcase Somali startups on a global platform and to profile the opportunities in this frontier economy. In 2021, Somalia moved up in the ranking by one, to be the 94th most innovative country for startups. In May, 2022, the new rankings were released and Somalia dropped to 98th. This is still a major accomplishment as only the top 100 countries are ranked.

You can see Somalia’s page on the StartupBlink site here: https://somalia.startupblink.com/

Five years ago, Response Innovation Lab launched its first platform in Jordan, kicking off an adventure that continues to prove exciting and essential to this day. To mark this milestone and the start of a new phase in our initiative, we wanted to share with you some of the most noteworthy accomplishments of our amazing colleagues and partners. Together, we have grown RIL into the largest network of field-based humanitarian innovation platforms in the world and have collectively demonstrated that decentralizing innovation processes, strengthening response-level ecosystems, promoting locally-developed solutions and encouraging horizontal scaling can improve humanitarian and “nexus” programming while also delivering on the promises of the Grand Bargain.

Learn about the Uganda RIL’s Kampala Impact Day events, and the three innovators nominated by the team.

Our labs are supporting several innovations that directly benefit refugee populations, learn more about these innovators and their pursuit to support their communities and others.

UNDP Accelerator Labs, Honey Bee Network, and GIAN have jointly organized the first International annual competition for creative & innovative ideas or traditional knowledge practices around the world, which solve day-to-day problems. Life Shelter received this International Award among 2,500 solutions around the world.

The Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) produced a report in November 2020 on the future of technology and innovation from the COVID-19 response. The Response Innovation Lab’s both in Iraq and Uganda were highlighted.