I believe technology and innovation
can help make a difference
for some of the world's biggest challenges.
Climate change is one of the biggest drivers
of hunger across the world,
and Africa is one of the regions that suffers most from it.
At the World Food Programme Innovation Accelerator,
we're looking for
the best start-ups and innovations globally,
and we help them go to scale to help lift people out of hunger.
We currently have a range of projects going on.
One innovation we've supported is called H2Grow,
a hydroponics initiative
where vulnerable populations learn
how to grow food without soil.
And what's exciting about hydroponics?
It takes 90% less water.
You need less space and is also needing less fertilizers,
if you're actually growing food.
In developing countries,
40 to 50% of the food is lost,
which is called post-harvest loss.
So it never enters the food value chain
from the field to be consumed by somebody.
So Post-Harvest Loss (PHL) Venture as we're calling it,
aims at some of the most vulnerable
smallholder farmers to try to help them dry the crops
and then to store them in a hermetically sealed bag or a silo.
And by doing that, you can reduce post-harvest loss
from up to 50% down to 1 or 2% only.
And what's really exciting as well is that all the energy,
all the seeds, all the fertilizer that has gone into producing
that food is no longer going to waste,
but is actually going to productively
be nutritious food for people to be consumed.
RF Rural Resilience Initiative
is to help some of the most vulnerable
smallholder farmers to get access to weather insurance.
You may suffer from an extreme event
a lot harder yourself
than when it's pooled across a large number of people.
So this is why weather insurance is so important.
And especially as we believe that there's going
to be more extreme events going further,
we actually need to make sure that this kind of basic insurance
gets more widespread across the globe.
Oftentimes people see problems,
but there's also opportunities and actions that each of us can take.
I encourage all of us to think about
what you can do in your company,
or also as an individual through consumer choice, for instance,
to help tackle the climate crisis.