UN goes digital to end hunger
From a smartphone app delivering market prices to Guatemalan farmers to online nutrition tips in rural Colombia, the push to end hunger has entered a new era with the UN food agency deploying the latest technology to fight it.The World Food Programme's new innovation hub, launched in Munich this week with the support of the German government, will seek out new technologies to help reach the goal of zero global hunger faster by 2030."If we continue progress at the same rate, we are not going to be even close to eradicating hunger by 2030," said Robert Opp, head of innovation at WFP.Among the ideas Opp's team is already developing is AgriUp, a low-bandwidth application for small-scale farmers in Guatemala, which provides information including farming tips, market prices and weather forecasts.Another is NutriFami, an interactive online platform designed to boost nutrition knowledge in rural Colombia. It will be available through a network of government-run internet cafes."Of course, innovation is not the only answer. There's political will and there's everything else that's involved in the fight against hunger, but innovation is one of the levers," Opp said. ..
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