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(Contibutor: GKI Senior Program Officer Amanda Rose) Pursuing innovation — whether incremental or radical, technological or process-based — can be a risky undertaking. That’s because innovation requires a fundamental break from the status quo, demands vulnerability, and absorbs often-limited resources. But while innovation may be risky, it remains a global development imperative; without inspired creativity…

When facing a world of challenges and opportunities—both those that are well known, and the many more that will come into prominence in the future—how do we choose where to devote our time and resources? One method to inform such choices, which the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) is testing with The Rockefeller Foundation: convening diverse, creative, and…

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), Michigan State University, the Global Knowledge Initiative, University of Rwanda, and Institute for Policy Analysis and Research kicked off a 3-year partnership on coffee productivity in Kigali on October 13, 2015. Organized as part of the Feed the Future initiative, the Africa Great Lakes Coffee Support program (AGLC) aims to create…

How do you know if a policy on science, technology, and innovation is working? What’s the best way to account for science’s role in a nation’s march to progress? How can you structure a new governing body to assure the contribution of technology and innovation to economic growth? Over the course of 18 months, the…

Boosting Incomes through Improved Access to Banana and Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato Plant Materials GKI is proud to announce the release of the LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) Uganda Context Analysis, which fits into a larger initiative to forge, optimize, and sustain an international network aimed at solving challenges in propagating and distributing…

Biotechnology: An answer to food insecurity and malnutrition? In Uganda, food insecurity and malnutrition pose enormous challenges.  Large proportions of rural Ugandans face food insecurity, and nearly half of Uganda’s population suffers from malnourishment.  Compounding this challenge, up to 80% of Uganda’s main staple crop of bananas have been destroyed by disease over the past…

Solving the most pressing challenges of our time requires that we capture the imagination, passion, and skills he many, rather the select few. Indeed, the challenges of food insecurity, climate change, and water and energy shortages will never be overcome by a single individual, institution, or discipline. Addressing such challenges requires that we find new…

Sparked by France’s passage of a recent law making it illegal for supermarkets to waste food, Al Jazeera produced a 30 minute piece on an issue central to GKI’s work on innovation for global development:   food loss. France’s bold new law forces stores to donate unsold food to charities or animal feed instead of discarding…

The GKI team traveled to Kampala, Uganda in April, 2015 to work with The Uganda National Council of Science and Technology (UNCST) to train Ugandan researchers on key entrepreneurship skills for successfully launching ventures. In back-to-back intensive trainings, GKI trained two cohorts on entrepreneurship tools such as value propositions, rapid prototyping, and “strategy shaping” –…

Through our Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions (LINK)  programs and Social Innovation Labs, the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) actively supports top agricultural innovations that address issues of global food security. This past February, GKI COO Sara Farley participated as a judge in the Thought For Food (TFF) Global Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. At…