Building a different type of fund to transform literacy and numeracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
uBoraBora was set up to fund implementers working on foundational literacy and numeracy programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Alongside our partners Laterite and with seed funding from BMGF, we are supporting open-minded implementers who are collectively frustrated with the status quo and who want to get under the hood of why and how interventions in this space work (or don’t).
Funders: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Partners: Laterite
Funding tech-enabled solutions that break the mold in sexual and reproductive health
The Hanga Sexual & Reproductive Health (SRH) Program offers technical and business support to startups in Sub-Saharan Africa who are exploring technology-enabled solutions to key issues in SRH.Brink provides money-can’t-buy support to these ventures to test their solutions and business models.
Funders: Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Rwanda ICT, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Rwanda
Partners: Three Stones International
Testing how frontier technologies such as AI, IoT and VR can be applied to some of the world’s biggest challenges
The Frontier TechTechnologies Hub works with the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) staff and global partners to understand the potential for innovative tech in the development context, and then test and scale their ideas. The Hub enables the FCDO to invest in early-stage ideas and radical technology solutions, build capacity to develop, use and govern technology responsibly and support locally led innovation.
Funders: FCDO
Partners: Results For Development, DT Global
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Empowering people by giving them the evidence they need to make decisions about technology in education
Brink leads innovation as part of the FCDO-funded Global EdTech Hub. Our role is to make room for experimentation and to convert evidence into implementation in Kenya, Malawi, Zanzibar, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. To do this we’re pioneering innovative approaches to research, such as the ‘sandbox‘ approach, which allows for the testing of new approaches in a small number of schools to learn what works, before innovations are rolled out more widely.
Funders: FCDO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, International Development Research Centre, World Bank
Partners: University of Cambridge, Results For Development, Jigsaw Education, OpenDevEd
Improving the access to medical oxygen in low and middle income countries
The FCDO-funded Oxygen CoLab brought together stakeholders to address oxygen provision in low-resource settings.
To date, across the portfolio of five grantees, more than 10,000 patients have been treated; and in 2024, for the first time ever, there will be fit-for-purpose oxygen concentrators for low-resource settings in the world.
Bringing together partners and funders to create a long-term vision on country vaccine systems strengthening
The Vaccine Data CoLab was created to make transformative strides towards a more equitable future, by strengthening data systems and enabling data-based decision-making to improve immunisation programming at the frontline.
The CoLab explored different aspects of the vaccine data system in Uganda, Nigeria and Indonesia, in order to strengthen hyperlocal systems in those countries.
Funders: FCDO
Partners: Infectious Disease Institute, Makarere University, Dev Afrique, DT Global, Vaccine Confidence Project, Data for Implementation
Enabling innovators working in conflict zonesto learn from one another, build partnerships and act as a force for change within humanitarian innovation.
Funders: Grand Challenges Canada
Accelerating the flow of evidence from academia to the workplace so employees can access, use, and respond to research and improve their health.
Funders: Grand Challenges Canada
Working to understand the current realities and future possibilities for the millions of entrepreneurial Kenyans who hustle to sustain livelihoods across the informal economy.
Funders: TRANSFORM
Partners: Laterite, Procol Kenya, Ideas Unplugged, Busara
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Building capacities for transforma(c)tion NOW – Agriculture & food, resources & circularity, energy & mobility.
Funders: GIZ
Bringing our expertise to enrich the experience of the ventures in the accelerator.
Funders: LSE, Marshall Institute
Contributed to this working paper addressing this challenge for development organisations in institutionalising a new ways of working,
Funders: OECD
Making the Invisible Visible: Imagining a Better Future for the Repair & Reuse Economy in Kenya.
Funders: FCDO
Partners: Shujaaz, Busara, Incubator Nest, Ideas Unplugged
Contributed to this research on emerging methods for supporting and managing innovation.
Funders: Nesta
Contributed to this report examining four very different ‘scenarios’ for the future of work in the UK.
Funders: RSA
A multi-country FCDO-funded programme that aims to support research and innovation systems strengthening in Africa.
Funders: FCDO
Enabling frontier technology solutions to reach people with disabilities in Africa, and to test business models that are most likely to succeed.
Funders: FCDO
Partners: AT2030, Global Disability Innovation Hub, Catalyst Fund
Worked with the senior team at Oxfam America to improve how the organisation fights poverty, inequality and injustice across the world.
Funders: Oxfam
Funders: FCDO
Partners: ODI
Funders: Hempel, Rwandan Government
Partners: Three Stones International
