CARE and WFP launch new innovation partnership

The United Nations World Food Programme and CARE Denmark today launched a partnership to support innovations to increase food security and climate resilience in Eastern Africa and the Horn.

The WFP and CARE Regional Innovation Hub for Eastern Africa and the Horn will leverage their expertise in food security, climate change resilience and innovation along with their public and private partners and the power of their combined brands to source, nurture and scale market-based innovations in the region, where CARE and WFP support over 39 million people.

The hub’s activities will include supporting innovation projects and internal capacity-building at CARE and WFP to improve humanitarian service delivery and programmes to support African startups with technical assistance and non-dilutive grant capital, and local partnerships to strengthen existing innovations ecosystems in the region.

“This is an ambitious vision and partnership in the pursuit of tackling some of the most pressing climate related challenges in groundbreaking and sustainable ways in the region, said CARE Denmark Chief Executive Officer Rasmus Stuhr Jakobsen.

“We seek to optimize our joint innovation capacity, expertise, and efforts across the region to ensure that innovation is responding to local problems and providing new undiscovered opportunities that are designed and tackled locally. Our ambition is sky high, and also has the potential for being rolled out to other parts of the world in the future,” he added.

“The reason innovation is so important for us here at WFP in Eastern Africa is that we simply can’t feed all the people we must if we continue to do things as usual. Our mandate compels us not only to save lives, but to change lives, and to do this we must invest in sustainable, locally designed solutions to local problems,” said WFP’s Regional Director at the Regional Bureau for Eastern Africa, Michael Dunford.

“We are very happy to start this innovation journey with CARE Denmark, which complements WFP’s institutional expertise on food security with CARE’s own specialized aptitude for climate change resilience and adaptation,” he added.