LocationsAccelerator Lab
Overview
Re-Imagining development for the 21st century
The speed, dynamics, and complexity of today’s challenges are fundamentally different from previous eras. Consider these looming challenges: the impact of artificial intelligence on employment; the potential for disinformation on social media; the need for policies that keep up with and drive innovation, while protecting human rights. Addressing these requires radically new approaches that match their complexity.
The Accelerator Labs are UNDP’s new way of working in development. Together with our core partners, the State of Qatar and the Federal Republic of Germany, 60 Labs serving 78 countries will work together with national and global partners to find radically new approaches that fit the complexity of current development challenges.
Being part of a globally integrated network, each Lab will draw inspiration from both local solutions and those identified elsewhere within the network. Working in parallel, Labs will benefit from each other in real-time, creating a powerful collective learning effect.
One of the 60 Accelerator Labs will be based in Barbados, serving this country as well as nations belonging to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.
The Accelerator Labs
Embedded within UNDP office, the Accelerator Labs will provide national partners with a set of new services to explore, test and grow solutions for complex sustainable development problems. Our approaches include:
- Sense-making: Labs will analyse, in almost real time, the local context challenges to identify connections and patterns to anticipate new avenues of work and act effectively to accelerate development.
- Solutions mapping: In close collaboration with local partners, the Labs will identify grassroots solutions and stretch their potential to accelerate development.
- Collective intelligence: The Labs will use collective intelligence to support partners better understand facts and ideas, develop new solutions, promote more inclusive decision making, and provide better oversight of what is done.
- Designing and testing: The Labs will simultaneously test approaches to tackle a singular complex development problem. This systematic process will allow learning to happen in weeks or months rather than years.
The success of Labs will be seen in three ways: their influence on nurturing experimentation and accelerating development programming, their impact on government policy, and their ability to inspire spin-off public and private ventures.
More information at: acceleratorlabs.undp.org
UNDP Accelerator Labs: Re-imagining development for the 21st century
The impact of artificial intelligence on unemployment. The potential for disinformation to spread on social media. The need for policies that keep up with and drive innovation, while protecting human rights.
Many of these challenges are growing exponentially. The speed, dynamics and complexity of today’s social, economic and environmental problems are fundamentally different from previous eras in history.
The Accelerator Labs are UNDP’s new way of working in development. Together with our core partners, the State of Qatar and the Federal Republic of Germany, 60 labs serving 78 countries will work together with national and global partners to find radically new approaches that fit the complexity of current development challenges.
The labs will transform our collective approach by introducing new services, backed by evidence and practice, and by accelerating the testing and dissemination of solutions within and across countries. Sense-making, collective intelligence, solutions mapping and experimentation will be part of the new offer from UNDP to governments.
Together with partners, the Labs will analyze challenges within local contexts to identify connections and patterns in search of new avenues of work to act effectively in addressing wicked development challenges.
Building on local innovators
The Labs will identify grassroots solutions together with local actors and validate their potential to accelerate development. Solutions can come in many different forms, from a farmer discovering a new way to prevent floods to a nonprofit that is especially impactful.
The labs will also harness the potential of real time data and people’s energy to respond to rapidly evolving challenges that impact development.
Building on these locally-sourced solutions, the labs will rapid test and iterate new ideas to learn which ones work, which ones can grow, and which ones don’t, bringing experimentation to the core of our work.
The ability to bridge to scale
The labs will accelerate their learning by operating within a global network where each lab learns from the rest, by exploring multiple solutions in parallel, and by designing experiments that teach us whether solutions can work and grow in weeks or months rather than years.
Accelerator Labs will build on UNDP’s partnerships with governments to scale solutions. Together with partners, they will try to learn what combination of solutions can influence how development is delivered. We’ll also be exploring policy frameworks that are needed to frame the ethics and incentives to drive development acceleration and try to identify portfolios of solutions that could spin off into independent ventures.
Read more about the Accelerator Labs:
Learning smarter; a global hunt for solutions to 'frontier challenges'
Accelerator Labs: the challenge of engaging the mothership
What are the new skills we need in development?
Innovation Challenge
Promoting recycling of waste in Lusaka and Ndola
WHAT IS THE INNOVATION CHALLENGE? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is looking to support ground breaking businesses that will change the management and recycling of waste in the cities of Lusaka and Ndola.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS INNOVATION CALL The purpose of this Innovation Call is to support private sector to promote circular economies. The inadequate recycling of waste threatens the capacity of the city councils to manage waste sustainably. Research undertaken by UNDP identified the main challenges to be insufficient capacity for the recovery and recycling of various types of waste streams; insufficient capacity and equipment for municipalities to deal with the collection, transportation and disposal of waste; and inadequate awareness on sound management of waste and their impact on human health and the environment.
AREAS THAT WILL BE SUPPORTED INCLUDE
- Sustainable Collection Models and Solutions to the Waste Management Value Chain.
Innovative business models that add value to the waste management value chain from separation of waste at source to sustainable measures in response to the waste products.
- Recycling of Waste Products.
Waste has value. Innovations that demonstrate value addition and recycling or repurposing of waste products are encouraged, especially as they have a big impact on reducing waste that is taken to the dump site
- Innovations in public outreach.
Innovative models and solutions to increase public awareness on and action to waste management, assisting the work being done by the Municipal Councils in Lusaka and Ndola.
WHO SHOULD APPLY The challenge is open to Zambian youths between the age of 18 – 35, with 50% allocation to women/girls. The innovation call envisages a new breed of young innovators in the waste management value chain. Apart from providing a portfolio of solutions that could be scaled with the hope of providing sustainable solutions to waste management, the call will result in the establishment of enterprises that will contribute to employment creation for the youth especially female youths and improve income generating opportunities in the sector.
The innovative business or idea must be implemented in Lusaka and Ndola. The applicant individual/company must apply for a challenge prize amount of no more than USD4,000 before 14th August 2020. Applicants must be willing to be matched to a business development programme, focused on enhancing their skills. The funding request must be for a specific and innovative business or idea that provides a solution to the challenge of waste recycling and is new to the targeted city. The project must demonstrate that it would continue beyond the life of the funding.
Eligibility Criteria
The application is open to youths assessed according to the following:
- Zambian youths between the age of 18 – 35, with 50% allocation to women/girls
- The innovative business or idea must be implemented in Lusaka and Ndola
- The applicant individual/company must apply for a challenge prize amount of no more than USD4,000
- The applicant(s) must be willing to be matched to a business development programme, focused on enhancing their skills.
- The funding request must be for a specific and innovative business or idea that provides a solution to the challenge of waste recycling and is new to the targeted city.
- Each successful individuals or small companies will receive a challenge prize amount up to USD4,000. These individuals or companies will be matched to a business development support and mentorship programme to enhance their skills.
- The project must demonstrate that it would continue beyond the life of the funding.
More on how those selected will be asssessed, click here
How to apply
Interested individuals or start-ups can make their applications by clicking here
or contact the following for inquiries:
Email: acclab.zm@undp.zm
Phone: +260211 386200