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UNICEF awareness drive in Côte d'Ivoire. A more traditional NGO approach. (Reuters/Thierry
Gouegnon)
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UNICEF,
the United Nations’ Children’s Fund, is diversifying its approach to supporting
vulnerable youngsters around the world, by launching a fund to back local tech
startups in emerging markets.
The
US$9 million Innovation Fund will support innovators from developing countries
with projects that are open source and have a working prototype. Applications
for funding will be assessed on criteria that includes strength of the team,
the project’s relevance to children and the ability to see potential future
value in the open-source intellectual property being created.
“It
doesn’t mean that the applications from those investments won’t have a global
reach but it does mean that we’re trying to find entrepreneurs in markets that
otherwise might not receive a lot of capital funding and help accelerate their
work,” says UNICEF Innovation Fund co-lead Christopher Fabian.
The
fund will focus its investments on products for youth; real-time information
for decision-making; and infrastructure to increase access to services and
information, such as connectivity, power, finance, sensors and transport.
The
successful applicants will be clustered into teams around certain types of
technologies that UNICEF has identified as ‘ripe for investment’, which include
blockchain, 3D printing, wearables and sensors, artificial intelligence and
renewable energy.
Initial
funding and investors from the US$9 million raised so far comes from the Danish
government, the Finnish government, the Walt Disney Company and the Page Family
Foundation.
“We
are trying to inspire people who might not have that initial capital to do
their work better. In markets where there aren’t a lot of services for a
startup, we know how difficult it is to get that first US$30,000 or US$40,000,”
says Fabian.
International
bodies like UNICEF as well as many NGOs have traditionally focused on
facilitating donations and funding to aid development or support vulnerable
populations. But as criticism has grown over the years of the role of powerful
well-funded NGOs in distorting local economies and sometimes even hampering
development, forward thinking individuals and the organizations themselves have
been exploring new approaches.
The
UNICEF Innovation Fund would aim to solve more problems quickly in emerging
markets by getting into the thriving technology startup space as well making
sure the youth get a proper education.
The
bar has been raised with investments that poured into Africa in 2015. The top three countries to receive the most funding last year were South Africa at US$56
million; Nigeria at US$49.4 million and Kenya with US$47.3 million. A huge
improvement since 2012 when investing in Africa was considered a risk.
The Innovation Fund will
not take an equity stake in any of the startups because it doesn’t need to,
says Fabian. “We’ve created a hybrid between the world of venture capital and
the world of international development, so what we do take is the intellectual
property that’s developed by the companies that we’re funding and put in the
public domain.”
Originally published in QUARTZ AFRICA
