The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP provides life-saving food assistance and supports rebuilding for more than 80 million people in 82 countries each year. With about 15,000 staff, most of them working in remote locations across the globe, the organization’s aim is to end hunger globally, but disruptive innovation is needed to reach a world without hunger by 2030.
Case Challenge
CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Traditional food assistance in often unable to provide solutions that can increase people’s food security during an emergency, such as conflict and natural disaster. Likewise, there is a need to provide for refugees and their host communities with solutions that can increase their food security whilst reducing their dependence on aid.
THE CHALLENGE
What moonshot innovation would you develop using exponential technology to provide sustainable access to local and nutritious food in a displacement context with an ability to positively impact millions of people in 10 years?
We are looking for low-cost, scalable solutions that enables severely marginalized people to support their (five-member, on average) household food and nutrition needs in a sustainable manner that lowers their dependence on aid and with a potential to strengthen resilience and create livelihood opportunities.
THE IDEAL SOLUTION
Solutions should seek to fulfil the following requirements as much as possible:
- The more portable, the better
- The faster the solution produces food, the better
- The cheaper, the better—for comparison: humanitarian assistance organizations usually spend around $75 per family/per month to provide a family of four with basic food
- The less dependent on external resources such as materials, water, and electricity, the better
- The more nutritious the food the solution produces, the better
- The more the solution engages with and gives back to the host community, the better
- The solution contributes to ending world hunger by 2030