adminLUSAKA — The UN children’s fund (Unicef) on Wednesday announced that its office in Zambia has been chosen as its latest innovation laboratory to develop solutions for key social issues in child and maternal survival. Zambia becomes the UN’s 15th innovation centre in the world. Unicef Representative in Zambia Hamid El-Bashir said in a statement obtained by Xinhua that the Zambian office has been chosen because of its programme, Mwana (meaning baby/child), in which SMS technology is used to lower the time it takes for mothers to learn the results of early infant diagnosis of HIV.
“Our team has worked to inspire more than 40,000 Zambian youths and adolescents to sign-up for U-Report to receive free, confidential, and real-time information on critically important issues such as how they protect themselves from HIV. I am also proud that we are producing innovative work in our water, sanitation and hygiene programme,” he added.
The Innovation Labs work to bring together the private sector, academia, and governments to develop solutions for key social issues in child and maternal survival, according to the statement.
The Unicef envoy said he was currently discussing with the Zambian government and other partners where to house the Innovation Laboratory, adding that the laboratory will be open to children and youth who want to develop and test their ideas.
He further expressed optimism that the work will produce terrific results in helping Zambia reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Chris Fabian, co-lead of Unicef’s Innovation Unit at the organisation’s headquarters in New York and who is on an official mission to Zambia, his team has been tracking Unicef’s innovation activities in the past three months.
“Unicef Innovation is an interdisciplinary team of individuals around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling open-source technologies and practices that strengthen Umicef’s work,” he said in the statement.
Among the other examples cited is the smartphone applications developed by Unicef offices in Uganda and South Sudan for reuniting families following earthquakes, floods or conflict. – Xinhua.
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