Renewable Energy Challenge Developing And Scaling Solutions For Burundi

Renewable Energy Challenge

Developing And Scaling Solutions For Burundi

San Jose, California, June 10, 2015

Today marks the launch of the Renewable Energy Challenge, the first challenge to be hosted on the CauseTech platform. This feature contest is supported by BoP Hub, the CauseTech Alliance, and the UNICEF Global Innovation Centre.

CauseTech is a new private sector initiative to crowdsource breakthrough ideas, inventions, products, and emerging technologies that can advance the work done by the UNICEF Global Innovation Centre worldwide.

Dubbed “Succeed Where There’s a Need,” the campaign promotes social entrepreneurship and aims to aggregate the world’s best and brightest innovators, technologists, IT professionals, product developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, academics and post-graduate students in a global open innovation ecosystem.

The aim is to tap into collective thinking and input to identify, adapt and deploy inventive technology solutions that can help UNICEF scale its efforts to meet the ever-growing needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and excluded children across 150 countries.

A dedicated community site (CauseTech.Net), powered by innovation platform leader IdeaScale, will enable participants to share ideas, vote and discuss refinements to “inspirations that overcome limitations.” CauseTech.Net will register and profile contributors and run crowdsourcing contests and challenges developed by UNICEF offices located in more than 150 countries.

CauseTech's first contest focuses on renewable energy solutions for Burundi, the most energy-poor country in the world. Lack of access to safe, clean, and affordable energy is a key bottleneck for children and their families in the Base-of-pyramid markets. In the context of Burundi, only 3% of the population is connected to the central electrical grid. The vast majority of the population is reliant on simple biomass fuels, such as wood, coal, and kerosene, to meet their cooking and lighting needs. These energy sources negatively impact all aspects of daily life – exposing households to severe health risks, restricting income-generating opportunities to daylight hours, stunting learning outcomes for children, and preventing the delivery of critical health services.

A switch to sustainable, off-grid energy solutions is urgently needed. Yet efforts to electrify rural Burundi are complicated by the following barriers:

Limited availability of quality energy products and services
Weak private sector presence
Low local capacity to operate and maintain renewable energy products
Limited infrastructure

The Challenge: How might we create sustainable renewable energy solutions to electrify rural Burundi?

By working together, the development sector can take advantage of private sector expertise, and the private sector will obtain a better understanding of users in Base-of-Pyramid markets.

The contest will run until August 31st, and will be followed by a judging period. The winner will be announced at the annual BoP World Convention and Expo, to be held this year in Mexico City. The winning solution will also be tested in the field in Burundi, with the potential to be scaled across regions.

“We hope private sector partners will step forward here to provide funding for crowdsourced innovation challenges such as the Burundi Challenge and to help us engage smart minds in solving real-world problems UNICEF workers are facing in the field,” notes Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council and BPI Network. A new global survey on Disruptive Entrepreneurship by his BPI Network, highlighted the top ways corporations could help advance social innovation. This includes:

Investing startups and crowdsourced ideation contests and challenges
Allocating resources to social innovation programs within the company
Supporting social causes focused on advancing technology innovation

“UNICEF is committed to ensuring innovative solutions be scaled to address needs for all,” notes Dr. Sharad Sapra, director of the UNICEF Global Innovation Center which has R&D labs in 10 countries. “Despite incredible developments and technological advances across the globe, there are still many populations that are remote and deprived."

“Our development strategy is to be the connector between all the relevant actors in the value chain, to ensure innovative solutions can be successfully implemented and scaled across regions and contexts,” adds Dr. Sapra. “Achieving our goal of reaching every child requires disrupting 'business as usual.' New ways of thinking have to be developed. Assumptions and strategies must change. That's why innovation is so important,” he adds.

Using the tagline, “Your Brilliance Can Make a Difference,” the campaign partner groups represent more than 12,000 high-level executives (CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, COOs, CFOs, LOB leaders, etc.) in 110 countries. Other partners and affiliates include media and publishing groups, corporate R&D centers, universities, incubators, accelerators, venture capitalists, angel investors, and serial entrepreneurs.

About CauseTech:

CauseTech is a private sector initiative sponsored by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in partnership with UNICEF Global Innovation Centre. Our mission is to engage the world's top innovators, technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs in a global ideation ecosystem. The goal is to identify, adapt, and deploy top innovative technology solutions in order to address the world’s most pressing challenges. Powered by the IdeaScale platform, community members will ideate around solutions that will help UNICEF scale its efforts to meet the ever-growing needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and excluded communities around the globe. For more information, visit http://causetech.net.

About UNICEF Global Innovation Centre:

UNICEF Innovation supports and incubates innovations developed by partners and enables externally generated innovations to be included in UNICEF’s innovation portfolio. The Centre provides leadership and technical support to the roll-out and scale-up of a select portfolio of proven, innovative solutions by expanding their application from one to several countries and regions, supporting South-South collaboration. Founding members of the GIC Steering Committee include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, the Philips Foundation, and the UNICEF National Committees of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. UNICEF Innovation works across three main areas: Providing support to hundreds of global UNICEF innovation projects that may need new partners, technologies, or connections. Development of and experimentation with new operational models, such as the UNICEF Fellows programme. Looking at the 3-5 year future horizon for UNICEF – things that are coming but not yet ready: 3D printing, the future of transportation and identity, digital currency, and other future possibilities. For more information, visit http://www.unicef.org/innovation.

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