ADDA evaluation report

About

Malawi, an African country with 20 million people, faces a population growth rate of 2.6%. Despite the economic expansion of the past three decades, the country has been recently experiencing a decline in living standards due to high inflation, global recessions, health emergencies, and climate change impacts. Poverty is widespread, with 70% of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.90/day. Education access is hindered by high costs and inadequate resources, with significant gender disparities. Malnutrition and limited access to healthcare services further impede children's development. The digital divide exacerbates educational challenges, especially in rural areas and for female students. Youth unemployment is high, with many working in the informal sector and facing barriers to entrepreneurship.

Emerging frontier technologies like drones, geospatial data, and AI offer potential for economic growth and agile development responses. Such technologies can enhance disaster response, healthcare delivery, and agricultural monitoring by providing real-time data, delivering medical supplies, and aiding in precision agriculture. Since 2019, drones have been piloted for delivery purposes in Malawi, showing positive impacts in development and humanitarian contexts. Ensuring financial sustainability for such interventions and addressing broader challenges like health, poverty, and environmental disasters are crucial. Initiatives that teach youth to use these technologies can strengthen 21st-century skills and contribute to more sustainable development. The Youth and Social Innovation Portfolio (UNICEF Innovation Unit)

Innovation and digital transformation are pivotal strategies in the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2022-2025, aimed at enhancing programming and operations while navigating the digital landscape's opportunities and risks for children. The UNICEF Global Innovation Strategy and Framework 2.0, developed in response to the 2018 Evaluation of Innovation at UNICEF, aligns all innovation investments with UNICEF's mission to support vulnerable children and young people. This strategy tackles critical and complex issues through nine distinct innovation portfolios, which feature scalable solutions sourced from both within and beyond UNICEF.

In the UNICEF Malawi Country Office (MCO), innovation and digital technology have been identified as key drivers to accelerate programme delivery and effectiveness. The UNICEF Country Programme Document (CPD) 2024-2028 focuses on leveraging innovation, digital technologies, and engaging young people as agents of change to enhance service delivery effectiveness and accelerate climate actions. The previous CPD 2019-2023 had a large innovation portfolio made of 47 initiatives under different categories. In 2023, the number of initiatives was streamlined in consultation with the programme sections and reduced to approximately 10-15 initiatives to ensure that they are more impactful and that investments and efforts are more focused. The Innovation Unit also introduced the “portfolio approaches”, aligned with the UNICEF Global Innovation Strategy. Three key innovation portfolios were identified: 1) Young People and Social Innovation, 2) Technology for Development (T4D) and Digital Innovation, and 3) Data and Drone Innovation. All the current 10-15 initiatives fall under these three portfolios.

The Innovation Unit facilitates innovation work across the CP’s goal areas and mobilizes capacity internally for which an innovation strategy has been devised that aims for innovations to be more problem-driven and programme-led. The Unit is also finalizing a Governance Framework that will provide structure and detailed processes for the effective implementation of the strategy. Innovation is cross-cutting, and a project can be under different sections within UNICEF. This is the case for the African Drone and Data Academy (ADDA), that falls under the umbrella of the Innovation Unit, the Education section, and the Programmes section. The African Drone and Data Academy (ADDA)

UNICEF and the Government of Malawi established the first humanitarian drone corridor to assess Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ (UAV) effectiveness in delivering critical services to remote populations. While evaluations identified challenges such as inadequate infrastructure and a lack of local expertise, UNICEF addressed these by launching the ADDA in partnership with Virginia Tech and the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) in January 2020. Initially based in Lilongwe and later moved to MUST, ADDA transitioned to local governance to ensure sustainable knowledge transfer and cost reduction. Funded by UNICEF Innovation Unit and led by Virginia Tech, the Academy supports certificate accreditation and the creation of an internationally recognized master’s degree. By 2023, ADDA was fully implemented by MUST, aligning with Malawi's regulatory framework.
ADDA offers to postgraduate African students advanced education in drone flight physics, communications, mechatronics, autonomy, data analytics, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and entrepreneurship. By cultivating essential 21st-century skills, ADDA aims to fortify the UAV ecosystem to enhance humanitarian and development outcomes. Within the YLIP, ADDA stands out as a key programme given its potential impacts and scalability across a wide array of sectors such as disaster risk reduction, health, agriculture WASH, and education.