The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is taking a cue from Silicon Valley and making venture capital investments in emerging market technology start-ups to create solutions for some of the most pressing problems facing children today.
UNICEF senior adviser on innovation Chris Fabian on Tuesday said that the first portfolio of investments includes five start-ups from Nicaragua, Bangladesh, South Africa and Pakistan, each of which are to receive about US$100,000 in seed capital.
He said UNICEF hopes to invest in 20 to 40 more start-ups next year.
“The best of Silicon Valley is agility, flexibility and ability to take risks, and the best of the UN and UNICEF is an ability to work strategically and at scale. If you can find a sweet spot in between that — if you can find a vehicle that combines risk-taking with the ability to make those solutions take hold at a government level — you can really make enormous change in the world,” Fabian said.
The first five start-ups to receive funding from the UNICEF Innovation Fund are looking generally at questions of identity and access to information.
Bangladeshi start-up mPower seeks to create a digital registry platform to better monitor maternal and child healthcare.
South Africa’s 9Needs is using blockchain technology to create a management system for early childhood development services.
“You could see that applied to kids in refugee camps and other settings,” he said, adding that the start-ups could help children have their education records and other information follow them around, even when they have been forcibly displaced.
Fabian said that while UNICEF does not take a stake in any of the companies and all the software being developed is open source, he still considers it an investment.
“Our returns could be huge, because we would get all the return that comes from having a powerful open-source technology stack everywhere in the world and that’s something we believe is an accountable asset,” Fabian said.
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