The SomRIL supported the SIMAD iLab to host the Global Goals Jam in Mogadishu in September, 2021. This event looked to using design thinking to address challenges in Somalia around achieving the SDGs.

In December, 2021, the SomRIL supported iRise as they organized the 3rd Mogadishu Tech Summit. We were able to organize 2 panel discussions. The first was on health innovations, and we facilitated the participation of Khalid, the founder and CEO of OGOW Health, and Sahra, the co-founder and CEO of Hello Caafi. The second was on innovations in the education sector where we facilitated the participation of World Vision, Save the Children, the Puntland MoE and Sisitech, to talk about the importance of public-private partnership and collaboration around the digital attendance pilot.

In 2019, the RIL co-convened an event with the Somali Food Security Cluster to better understand the challenges in the sector. One challenge that emerged was around the sustainability of agriculture capacity in local institutions. The pandemic delayed the progression of this MatchMaker submission, but in 2021 the SomRIL was able to partner with the SomReP consortium, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, and the Somali National University (SNU). This partnership and pilot is still unfolding, but the intent is for the SomReP to share their climate smart agriculture modules, have them endorsed by the MoAI, and then to develop a curriculum for the SNU to own and to offer to NGOs and others.

Hello Caafi! is a groundbreaking telehealths solution from Somalia, designed and led by two remarkable women innovators.

The Hiddo & Hirsi educational videos are the first series of its kind for Somali-speaking children. Together, the innovator Poet Nation Media, the Somali Response Innovation Lab, and its local host World Vision Somalia developed a segment called Hiddo & Hirsi – the Protector Twins. These twins envision themselves as superheroes protecting their community from the Coronavirus and show how they deal with the challenges of closed school, psycho-social and mental health awareness, gender inclusivity and handicap representation, and much more!

In Somalia, a challenge to the local health ecosystem was identified that there wasn’t a way for refugees and vulnerable populations to track their care or access care. An innovative solution was identified and needed support with piloting. The Somali Response Innovation Lab has been helping OGOW EMR with its first pilot. Click to learn about the impressive results.

The Response Innovation Lab (RIL) has developed an Innovation M&E Toolkit to gather evidence around humanitarian innovations to better understand whether it’s having the desired positive impact. This video is a short case study for the toolkit’s use in Somalia to gather evidence around the OGOW EMR digital medical records, health pilot project with World Vision.

Khalid Hashi, founder of the Somali-based OGOW EMR health record innovation talks about the lessons he has learned as a social entrepreneur in a humanitarian setting.

Hear from an enterprise, a business support organization, an academic institution, and a consulting firm based out of Somalia and how they are working towards being more resilient to shocks caused by a crisis, such as COVID-19.

The challenge of understanding school attendance within Somalia has been ongoing for quite some time due to several reasons such as displacement of communities due to recurring disasters and lack of correct information regarding school children. There are some additional complications to this in cases where children may have similar names, or variations such as Muhammed or Muhammad. Although there is some record keeping, it is done sporadically and is inconsistent. In order to understand the causes of dropouts and the dynamics of variables like gender, there needs to be a more efficient and effective way of capturing and storing this data.

A short video to showcase RIL’s M&E tool in Somalia gathering evidence around an educational pilot case study of the Digital Attendance Application (DAA) education pilot with World Vision.

The Somali RIL presented on the collaborative public-private approach in building partnerships and leverage humanitarian mechanisms in the co-creation of public health messaging products that are open-sourced, and therefore quickly scaled to build a national prevention response campaign to COVID-19.

See what each of the labs is doing to prevent and fight COVID-19 in their responses.

A deep dive into the solution identification and piloting of an app, to meet an education challenge in Somalia.

Somalia RIL conducted a rapid mini-assessment survey in April 2020, focused on understanding the needs and priorities of humanitarian actors in the COVID-19 response. These results are being shared openly to foster learning, improve coordination, and prioritize resources to areas of need.

The report presents the findings from the RISE innovation ecosystem mapping study which seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the key actors, factors, and relationships within Somalia’s humanitarian innovation sector.

On February 27th, 2020, the Response Innovation Lab (RIL), along with the SomReP and BRCiS consortiums co-hosted a session at the Sankalp Forum’s 7th Africa Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. The session showcased that despite the challenges in Somalia, there are many opportunities for innovation, partnership, and investment.