The Response Innovation Lab is our ecosystem partner for Uganda.
The Response Innovation Lab (RIL) is a global initiative founded by World Vision, Save the Children, Oxfam, and Civic to integrate innovation into humanitarian responses. The RIL nurtures partnerships that develop, test, scales, and recognizes locally-driven innovations and solutions to context specific challenges or barriers to respond to the needs of vulnerable populations more effectively and efficiently.
Response Innovation Lab (RIL) Uganda was launched in 2018 by founding member Save the Children to bridge a gap in the ecosystem between traditional and non-traditional emergency and development stakeholders (on the one hand development and humanitarian practitioners from NGOs, CBOs, UN, Government and on the other academia, innovators, startups). Furthermore, the RIL aims to create bridges between local and international stakeholders and favor the localization of solutions that can respond to humanitarian needs and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Open Source for Equality (OSEQ) project launched by URIDU strongly aligns with the RIL values and mandate in Uganda and following its four years of activity in the country, the RIL can leverage a strong network and deep connections in the ecosystem with varied stakeholders.
Additionally, RIL encourages the use of Open Standards, Open Data, Open Source applications and Creative Commons licensing as these approaches have the potential to achieve greater scalability and sustainability and thus welcome the ambition of the OSEQ project; noting that it is often misunderstood in Uganda as software developers and content creators often frown at this model – convinced that it would prevent them from growing a viable business.