Deadline: 31 January 2020
Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity has launched the “Sustainable and Healthy Food for All – How can urban populations increase access to healthy and sustainable foods, despite rapid urbanization?” Challenge with an aim to find and support innovative solutions that will promote urban access to healthy and sustainable food for all.
To do so, the Mohammed bin Rashid Initiative for Global Prosperity is seeking applications from innovators and makers around the world that will:
- Provide equitable and affordable access to healthy, low carbon food in cities
- Create more efficient supply chains and reduce food loss and waste
- Reduce hunger, malnutrition, and food related illnesses in urban areas
The rapid pace of urbanization has dramatically shifted how they approach food systems globally. In 1900, only two percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Today, it is over half of the global population, and over the next 30 years, that proportion is expected to increase to about two thirds. While cities offer great potential for economic, cultural, and societal development, cities in particular face a host of challenges in sustainably feeding their communities, including lengthy supply chains, inadequate infrastructure and waste management systems, and less opportunities for households to produce their own food.
By 2050, global food systems will need to sustainably and nutritiously feed nearly 10 billion people, and 80 percent of the world’s food will be consumed within urban areas. The challenge to ensure that everyone in the world can feed themselves has become intertwined with concerns around which foods they are consuming, where they are eating them, and how they are grown, processed, and delivered. Further, as food systems contribute to the increasing incidences of non-communicable and food-borne diseases and represent one of the world’s largest employers and primary drivers of climate change, these issues have far-reaching consequences on people’s nutrition and health, the potential to create viable jobs and livelihoods, and the future sustainability of their planet.
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.
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