KATHMANDU, Aug 2: The United Nations Development Programme has launched the Accelerator Lab to help Nepal identify, test and scale innovative solutions to emerging development challenges facing the country and the world today. The Nepal lab will be part of a network of 60 Accelerator Labs across the world, making it the world's largest and fastest learning network around development challenges.
As a knowledge hub for experimentation and scaling of innovative ideas, the lab is expected to help countries accelerate the progress toward the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a press statement issued by UNDP in Nepal. Housed within UNDP, the lab will be fully equipped with needed resources and expertise to convene a wide spectrum of people locally and also to connect with the 60 other labs across the globe to foolproof solutions, draw ideas and share lessons.
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UNDP, currently engaged in some 170 countries and territories across the world, is mandated to support member states in their efforts to advance the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs by providing integrated solutions to the development challenges they are confronting. “The Accelerator Lab, funded by the State of Qatar and the Federal Republic of Germany, will work together with national and global partners to find radically new approaches that fit the complexity of current development challenges,” said the statement.
The Lab has three services to offer, namely mapping existing solutions and innovators in Nepal, experimenting with new approaches to tackle complex development issues and tapping into new sources of data and collective intelligence to accelerate progress, according to Head of UNDP's Regional Innovation Center for Asia and the Pacific based in Bangkok Guilio Quaggiotto.
