Together with Majlisna - Civic Jordan, we successfully hosted our first Thoughtcast session in Jordan to discuss what NGOs need from entrepreneurs and what entrepreneurs can offer. We welcomed participants from international and local NGOs, social business, academia, and tech and innovation sectors for fruitful exchanges!

In the heart of Uganda, a transformative story unfolds—Prum Ventures, a beacon of innovation and compassion, is rewriting the narrative of community well-being. This is the inspiring chronicle of Walter Dunga and Prudence Mucunguzi, visionary entrepreneurs on a mission to combat micronutrient deficiencies and reshape the health landscape of the region.

Response Innovation Lab has just released two short videos summarizing key 2023 achievements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and East and Central Africa (ECA) regions.

You can watch the MENA recap here and the ECA recap here.

Response Innovation Lab and the World Food Programme have joined forces to facilitate the development and adoption of innovative solutions to key challenges in the Somali food system space. This collaboration culminated in a workshop held in Hargeisa on September 19-21 and co-facilitated by the two partners.

RIL Affiliate Facility Kumwe Hub has been supporting Rwandan social enterprise Rainbow Health Food with critical investment capital. This funding has allowed the company to scale up its business of providing nutrient-rich foods to school children. That story is told in the video below.

Dear humanitarian innovators and innovative humanitarians,

I hope that this blog post finds many of you enjoying a well-earned vacation.  Leaving your day to day surroundings has a way to elicit some fresh thinking and gain some perspective on things, no?  In my case, the change of perspective is quite literal:

We are thrilled to share the remarkable outcomes of RILx23, the annual event organized by Response Innovation Lab (RIL), which took place in Nairobi last week. RILx23 served as a vibrant platform that brought together diverse stakeholders from the Response Innovation Lab network, alongside selected global and regional humanitarian innovation actors.

Response Innovation Lab is preparing its most high profile event to date — RILx23. The event will take place in Nairobi on June 12-15 under the theme of New Frontiers in humanitarian innovation partnerships.

We are very excited to announce that the Smart Communities Coalition and Response Innovation Lab have decided to join forces and merge. The Coalition will join our network to become RIL’s private sector convening arm.

SomRIL has supported the Somali Livestock Insurance Consortium (SLIC) comprised off the SomReP consortium, ILRI (Internation Livestock Research Institute) and the Federal Government of Somalia, raise awareness across many public and private stakeholders, conduct feasibility studies, support the government for a task-force, and support the development of a Policy Roadmap. We also created an explainer video in English, Somali and Arabic: https://youtu.be/uQhcLojJxjY

In early 2021, the initial pilot between WV and OGOA Health concluded at the two targeted health facilities. However, the system continues to operate, and eventually funding was secured to expand the system to connect a total of 15 health facilities. MOUs were also signed with the Puntland Ministry of Health, endorsing the system.

https://youtu.be/XCL4w4ibk2E

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/

Based on feedback received from users of our original Evidence Toolkit, RIL began work on developing a more focused package of tools and instructions specifically aimed at teams implementing innovation pilots and scaling projects. This content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license and can be found on this page: https://www.responseinnovationlab.com/toolkits

In 2021, the SomRIL partnered with the Internet of Production Alliance (IOPA), and two of their members, Field Ready and Humanitarian Open Street Maps. This was around the Open Know Where (OKW) standards that were just released in 2021 to help standardize the mapping of factories to promote local manufacturing. We conducted a small pilot together with World Vision, Oxfam, the Somaliland Chamber of Commerce and the SIMAD iLab to map factories in Mogadishu and Hargeisa. We also had the standards translated into Somali. You can see these materials here: https://www.internetofproduction.org/open-know-where

In our efforts to support localization efforts, we have the privilege to lead a multi-country and multi-agency cross learning imitative. This project is working with Care Somalia and World Vision Sudan and World Vision South Sudan, 31 LNGOs from across the three countries, and Sadar Institute. The goal is to build the capacity of humanitarian LNGOs so that they are better equipped to respond. This initiative has been developing 10 curriculums that range from Community Driven Resilience, to Early Warning Systems and much more.

Click here to see the video series developed as part of the C4FC project

The challenges of the pandemic also revealed opportunities for innovation as it showed that the temporary covid telehealth services could be work in Somalia. Hello Caafi was launched in 2021 and is the first and only telehealth service in Somalia. The SomRIL has been working to support the expansion of this service, and to broker partnerships.

https://www.responseinnovationlab.com/knowledge-blog/leveraging-technology-to-improve-health-in-somalia

Over the course of four months, the RIL Central Support Unit worked with the Save the Children Sudan Country Office to help its team and partners apply innovation processes to four challenges that they had identified.