Frontier Tech Hub

Will you help us celebrate World Youth Skills Day 2024? 🧑💻🚀 Our pilots get to collaborate with incredible young scientists, designers and researchers around the world, and we feel lucky to be a small part of their stories yet to come. 📉Youth Innovation Lab up-skill young people in Nepal to build innovative services such as the BiPad portal for the Nepalese government. With the FT Hub they're supporting local municipalities to use the platform to plan against disaster risk: 📦Computer scientists Maraf Mengesha and Bilisu Juna from Haramaya University are working with Arribada Initiative to install sensors in Ethiopia, tracking aid with Geoseals (while working on their own LLMs and plant detection projects): https://lnkd.in/dCe3663Z 🏝 In the Solomon Islands Vaipo'uli Manuopangai is training with Tropic Group Builders Ltd (TGB) to learn CNC design and operating to minimise supply-chain constraints faced by islands in the Pacific: https://lnkd.in/dCjZ2Mai 🛫 And Violet Ochieng' worked with Astral Aerial Solutions and CABI to pilot drones to tackle locust swarms, where years later she's now a fully trained drone operator! https://lnkd.in/gp_7FTZT As the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres says: "let’s ensure that youth have what they need to build skills for shaping a more peaceful, sustainable future for all” 💬 👏 #TechforGood #youthskills #youth #worldyouthskillsday #WYSD #skillsrightnow #youthintech Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation Thomas Coward Tristan Eagling Pradip Khatiwada Sumit Dugar Philip Cockerill Maureen McWhirter Phil Outram

It's time for a Frontier Tech film festival 🎬 🍿 Over the next 10 weeks we will be sharing films showcasing frontier technologies being used in the real world, starting with AI in Nepal 🌏 Across Nepal, data on the condition of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) assets is collected and uploaded onto a central government portal. But the data is often inaccurate 🚫 How do you make good decisions with bad data? The unfortunate result is that Nepalese people's access to water has been compromised as a result 💧 Enter the AI for WASH pilot: In this video, we meet FCDO Pioneer Kamala kc and implementing partners Rara Labs and Prixa, who have been testing the use of AI image recognition to analyse 1 million photos to improve the accuracy of this data. And help people access safe and reliable water 🚀 #AI #WASH Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation #TechforGood #AIforgood #imagerecognition #nepal Prixa.ai

Two years ago we asked: what will the digital democracy space look like in the future? 🗳 2024 is a record-breaking year for elections, with more than 2 billion voters casting ballots across 64 countries globally. This year we will inevitably learn how much technology can impact our governance and leadership. In this special edition of the Frontier Tech Hub Newsletter: - A look at our 2022 Future of Elections podcast - Four signals we anticipated, coming to life already - Pnyx: our digital democracy pilot in Malaysia - Four new ideas to use tech to protect democracy #democracy #govtech #techforgood #AI #deepfakes #horizonscanning Dr. Emmy Chirchir (PhD) MBS Poorani Krishnan Digitum Labs https://lnkd.in/gwSB7MxC

In international development, it's tough to make use of the tens of thousands of documents published each year, relating to strategy, policy, programmes, evaluation reports, research, literature reviews and more. 📚 They're all vital to sharing learning and information openly. But no one has enough time to read it all, let alone distill complexity and contextualise with other sources to relate it to their own work. 👀 ❓ Could Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT help? LLMs are improving all the time, and there are already examples of them being used to support in other sectors. For example, some law companies are using LLMs to find similar cases or summarise past legal advice or case precedents. Read more from FCDO Pioneer Sebastian Mhatre who is exploring the role LLMs can play in international development in his pilot: 'Using LLMs as a tool for International Development professionals' with Baobab Tech 🧑💻 #LLMs #internationaldevelopment #chatgpt #information #AIforgood https://lnkd.in/gzvcnA_4

We know that frontier technologies hold huge impact to support access to healthcare, from drones delivering vaccines to innovative oxygen concentrators and smart sensors to track the delivery of malnutritional aid. Thanks Abas and the Federal Ministry of Health Ethiopia for exploring that potential with us last week 🙌

🎙️ Frontier Tech Talks 🎙️ In our 6th and final episode, we're looking at how to get regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders on your side. Asad Rahman is joined by Susana Moreira, from the NGO Village Reach, to discuss how she has worked with policymakers and regulators in Mozambique. A scientist by training, Susana has been operating the largest, most complex drone project in the country's history. Many more countries are starting to experiment with drones for social and economic development,and for those pioneering or working on these projects, getting those in charge of policy and regulation involved and on the same side is one of the most important - and hardest - parts of the job. Listen in now 👇 #FrontierTechHub #Podcast Brink Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation DT Global Results for Development

Ampersand Energy was one of our earliest pilot projects in Kigali, Rwanda, now entering the market in Kenya 🇰🇪 🔋 During their pilot with FCDO Pioneer Martin Alsop they developed battery-swappable EV moto-taxis and have raised $34.4 million to date and has 2,200+ bikes in Rwanda. But Kenya will be a tougher market, where there are over 2 million motorcycles already. Ampersand’s expansion to Kenya comes following rising gas prices, a cost-of-living crisis that has sparked protests, and a government commitment to electrify urban transport. They launched in Nairobi in December 2022 and have already sold 655 motorcycles — roughly a fifth of all electric motorcycles in Kenya. After Kenya, they're looking to Uganda and Tanzania next. We're cheering you on Ampersand! 👏 #EV #Electricvehicles #greentech #cleantech #rwanda #emobility https://lnkd.in/eytMyagj

🎙️ Frontier Tech Talks Tuesday 🎙️ Over the years, there’s been a spike of interest in how unmanned aerial vehicles - UAVs or ‘drones’ - can solve some big problems in low-resource settings. Today we're exploring integrating multi-purpose drones for development in Malawi, in conversation with Daniel Ronen, Founder and CEO of UAVAid. He tells us about how he's integrated use cases, like delivering health commodities, taking images of flooding, and using live video to stop poachers, in Malawi. Listen in here 👇 #FrontierTechHub #Podcast Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation Brink DT Global Results for Development

Ahead of International Women in Engineering Day, we wanted to highlight the incredible work of Ruby Hill, who developed the 'Geoseals' hardware for a pilot exploring whether frontier tech can track humanitarian aid to its final destination 📦 🌍 Ruby has been working with Alasdair Davies at Arribada Initiative to bring FCDO Pioneer Philip Cockerill's idea to life, working closely with UNICEF, World Food Programme, Haramaya University and the Federal Ministry of Health Ethiopia to test their solution in health centres across Harar, Ethiopia. If Ruby's Geoseal hubs can track the stock levels of life-saving malnutrition supplements, which have high water contents, then this solution could be applied to almost any other humanitarian good. "Anything you can put a sticker on," says Ruby. Big thanks also to the people who feature in this story and helped to install the Geoseal hubs: Maraf Mengesha, Bilisu Juna, Chaltu Abdurahman and Mekit Girma, and finally to Greg Mckinney who captured this story through his camera lens 📸 #INWED24 Women's Engineering Society #Geoseals #humanitarianaid #techforhumanitarian #strengtheninghealthsystems #techforgood #ethiopia Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office UNICEF Innovation WFP Supply Chain Fergus McBean (He/Him) https://lnkd.in/eERbd4-9

🎙️ Frontier Tech Talk Tuesday 🎙️ Today we're exploring testing a pay-as-you-go bikes model in Zambia, and we're joined by Wyson Lungu, Founder and CEO of Onyx Connect Zambia. Through is work, Wyson has provided bicycles, along with a package of tech including smartphones, GPS, and solar lamps, throughout Zambia. In this episode, he talks about the challenges, how he overcame them, and his plans for the future. Listen now 👇 #FrontierTechHub #Podcast #TechForGood Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - Research, Science and Innovation Brink Results for Development DT Global