When Innovation Meets Crisis

Inside The HIPpening 2026

Norway’s Humanitarian Innovation Programme brought ten projects to Nairobi to tackle one question: how do you scale solutions that save lives? Innovations can come. But without collaboration, they fail to scale. That was the opening provocation at The HIPpening 2026, a three-day gathering in Nairobi where Norway’s Humanitarian Innovation Programme (HIP) brought together the teams behind ten projects working to reshape how the world responds to crisis.

HIP, administered by Innovation Norway, exists to do something unusual in the humanitarian sector: incentivise and de-risk partnerships between private companies and humanitarian organisations. The model is built on the premise that finding new and better ways to support communities affected by crisis requires the kind of collaboration that traditional aid funding rarely produces.

And the evidence from this cohort suggests the model is working.

From Pilots to Proof

Across three days, project teams shared progress that went well beyond the pilot stage. In Uganda’s Bidibidi refugee settlement, young people trained as repair technicians have fixed over 3,500 solar lanterns, turning electronic waste into functioning products and livelihoods. The cooperative they built, BEMCOS, is now community-owned and still operating after HIP funding ended in April 2025.
In northwest Syria, where supply lines have been severed by conflict, Engineers Without Borders Norway and Field Ready have spent years building trust to enable local production of water filtration systems. When you cannot import the parts, you start working with communities to repair and build locally made solutions. That partnership, developed over many years of remote collaboration, has delivered safe water to tens of thousands.

In Rwanda’s Mahama refugee camp, a project supported a refugee entrepreneur already selling smartphones to scale his business, proving that displaced communities are viable markets when you design the right business model around them.
And in Mozambique, Bridge Carbon and IOM are bringing clean cooking and nature-based energy solutions to displaced communities, with a clear ambition:

Blending finance to bring private sector investors into humanitarian work.

The Space to Fail

What makes HIP distinctive is how it holds the tension between urgency and experimentation. When people’s lives are at stake, innovation is both more crucial and more challenging. HIP is set up to share that risk through grant funding, mentoring, support, advisory, and innovation expertise.

Critically, the programme creates space for the kind of learning that the humanitarian sector often struggles with. HIP supports projects by acknowledging that trying, failing, adjusting, and pivoting is an integral part of the innovation process. That permission to iterate is rare in a sector where accountability pressures can make organisations risk-averse.

The programme has also worked to ensure that procurement procedures are both innovation-friendly and continue to safeguard against corruption, recognising that how you buy solutions matters as much as which solutions you fund.

Community Ownership as the Scaling Strategy

A consistent theme across every project was the centrality of community involvement. HIP requires it from the start. When they grant funding, it is a requirement that you work with the communities that have the challenge from the beginning and throughout the project period.

That requirement is producing results. In Bidibidi, the BEMCOS cooperative demonstrates what happens when community ownership is built into the model from day one: the businesses are still operating today, independent of grant funding. As one project lead put it, making someone believe in an idea like BEMCOS is built around community ownership. When people have been involved throughout the process, you have a higher chance of adoption.

The goal across the portfolio is clear: everything they are trying to do is to ensure that initiatives are financially sustainable within a few years, no longer dependent on grants forever. Projects with local ownership have a far better chance of enduring.

Innovation That Gives People Control

Perhaps the most powerful framing came from a reflection on what good humanitarian innovation actually achieves. When we innovate well in the humanitarian sector, people are able to regain control in moments of uncertainty.

That idea ran through every conversation at The HIPpening. Whether it was children with disabilities accessing assistive technology through the NIKO partnership, women in crisis accessing digital safe spaces, or pastoralist communities gaining financial protection through index-based livestock insurance, the thread was the same: innovation that shifts power toward the people living through crisis.

The private sector partners in these projects bring expertise in adapting products based on user feedback. The humanitarian organisations bring deep understanding of context and trust. And the communities themselves bring the knowledge that determines whether a solution actually works.

What Comes Next

The projects that gathered in Nairobi are at different stages. Some have already outlived their funding and are operating independently. Others are refining their models, rethinking implementation challenges collaboratively, and preparing for the next phase of growth.

What The HIPpening made visible is that the gap between a promising pilot and a scaled solution is closing. The ingredients are there: committed partnerships, community ownership, honest reckoning with what works and what does not, and a funder willing to share the risk.

The humanitarian sector’s biggest innovations will be the ones that eventually embed within the systems that exist in communities, because those communities have been involved throughout the process. That is what HIP is building toward. And in Nairobi, it was clear that the building is well underway.

Intro Africa was on the ground at The HIPpening 2026 in Nairobi, producing impact stories and documenting the programme’s approach to humanitarian innovation. Watch the full film on our channels.