Deadline: 31 January 2020
Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is seeking applications for its “Innovation for Inclusive Trade – How can rural communities increase their access to new supply chains and markets in order to create better livelihoods for themselves?” Challenge with an aim to find and support solutions that will enable inclusive trade in rural communities.
To do so, the Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is seeking applications from innovators and makers around the world that will:
- Increase competitiveness and give comparative advantages to communities traditionally left out of trade opportunities
- Improve the ability of rural communities to move across skills, industries, and regions
- Facilitate the integration of rural markets with the global economy
The Global Maker Challenge is an online open-innovation platform that offers an opportunity for ‘makers’ and innovators to connect and collaborate, wherever they are in the world, to solve real-world problems affecting people’s lives. Leveraging manufacturing innovation to provide viable and deployable solutions for the world’s most pressing issues, it invites world-leading manufacturers and organisations to adopt challenges, provide mentorship, and help solve real-world problems.
In order to fully harness the potential of trade to advance the livelihoods of the 1 billion people who still live off of $1.25 per day, innovative solutions are needed to address the constraints that limit rural communities from achieving greater economic gains.
Open trade and market access have proven to be key drivers of economic growth and poverty reduction in countries at every level of development. The ability to trade globally has fostered more openness, stability, and transparency, which in turn has enabled unprecedented economic growth worldwide and contributed to uplifting hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. Countries that engage in international trade typically grow faster and provide more opportunities to their people than countries that do not trade openly. Further, by offering consumers access to more affordable goods and services, open trade also helps improve the livelihoods of lower-income communities.
Yet, for the millions of people living in rural areas – where extreme poverty and food insecurity are concentrated – significant barriers exist that prevent them from reaping the full benefits of open trade, including poor and unreliable access to infrastructure and public services, high costs for goods, services, and transport, lower population densities, and poor connectivity. These issues are especially prevalent in countries affected by violence and conflict, which can directly hinder the ability to trade and raise the price of basic goods and services. Further, women in these contexts are disproportionately affected by poverty and face greater risks and barriers that limit their ability to benefit from the opportunities brought by trade.
Benefits
The Global Maker Challenge will award winners with prizes of value up to USD 1,000,000 in prizes.
Scoring Criteria
- Alignment: The solution addresses the challenge that has been set forth.
- Potential for Impact: The planned implementation of the solution has the potential to impact lives.
- Scalability: The solution can be grown and scaled to affect the lives of more people.
- Innovative Approach: This is a new technology, a new application of a technology, a new business model, or a new process for solving the challenge.
- Feasibility: It is feasible to implement the solution, and the team has a plan for the solution to sustain itself financially.
For more information, visit https://makingprosperity.com/all-cohorts