Cohen practiced corporate law in Tel Aviv, advising startups on founders' agreements, term sheets, and due diligence for venture capital firms and accelerators. She later went to business school and applied to the World Food Programme, expecting to stay a few months. Twelve years on, she has spent the last 10 of those years on WFP's innovation team. The WFP Innovation Accelerator launched in 2015 as a five-person team based in Munich, separate from WFP's Rome headquarters.
The Accelerator now runs more than 50 innovation programs and has worked with over 530 startups and teams, Cohen said. It ran 14 programs last year and received 578 applications for its Humanitarian Innovation Accelerator call. Programs combine in-person innovation boot camps with grants of up to $100,000, paired with access to WFP operations across more than 100 countries. Cohen said selection favors startups with existing product traction over early-stage ideas, since most programs run six to nine months and need teams that can deploy quickly.
One Accelerator portfolio company, Ignitia, operates in 10 countries and works with WFP in Mali, with a Nigeria rollout now underway, Cohen said. Ignitia combines satellite data with AI models to deliver hyper-localized weather forecasts to farmers through simple smartphones, telling them when to plant or harvest as climate shocks disrupt traditional farming calendars. WFP and Ignitia are now testing distribution through community radio to reach farmers without smartphones.
WFP co-developed an open-source disaster mapping tool with Google called Sky, available on GitHub, Cohen said. Sky compares satellite imagery from before and after a disaster, cutting analysis time from roughly three weeks to under 48 hours, which helps responders find affected areas and damaged routes faster. A second tool, Scout, applies AI to WFP's procurement and logistics planning across a fleet of 80 ships, 4,000 trucks, and 40 airplanes. Scout saved WFP $6.2 million in procurement decisions over two years in West Africa alone, Cohen said.
Cohen said the Accelerator keeps looking for ag tech and fintech startups through a rolling application at innovation.wfp.org. She is also exploring innovative finance, since most Accelerator grants range from $100,000 to roughly half a million dollars. Cohen said scaling startups globally will require funding well beyond that range, and she wants to connect with impact investors who can fund startups through that next stage. Founders and investors can reach her at hila.cohen@wfp.org or follow WFP Innovation Accelerator on LinkedIn.
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