LocationsIn 2025, UNDP Cameroon’s Accelerator Lab embarked on a transformative journey to reimagine resource management and climate resilience through innovation. By designing a portfolio of service offers grounded in digital foresight, inclusive governance, and gender-responsive strategies, the Lab positioned UNDP Cameroon as a key enabler of sustainable development. This blog captures the highlights of that journey, integrating lessons learned, donor engagement outcomes, and strategic pathways forward.
From Insight to Impact: UNDP Accelerator Lab’s Innovation Portfolio and Resource Management Strategy in Cameroon
November 3, 2025
Five Service Offers for Resource Management Transformation
To support improved resource management across the Country Office (CO), the Accelerator Lab developed five flagship service offers:
- Horizon Scanner (HS) – A big-data foresight tool to support evidence-based policy formulation and anticipatory governance for governments inside and outside Cameroon.
- Digitalization Service Offer – Introduced interoperable e-governance platforms, AI-powered dashboards, and blockchain-based land registries to strengthen resource governance.
- Circular Waste Management Proposal (Mbankomo) – Advanced digital waste intelligence systems and policy labs for circular economy planning.
- Women in Green Concept Note – Embedded gender-responsive strategies into resource management policies for agriculture and energy sectors.
- Africa Tech Summit – Positioned to scale digital ecosystems and spotlight women in tech leadership.
These offers collectively positioned resource management within a future-proof, inclusive framework while opening new funding streams to accelerate implementation.
Climate Innovation: Designing for Adaptation and Mitigation
In parallel, the Lab designed service offers focused on climate adaptation and mitigation:
- Climate Finance Mechanisms – Leveraging AI-driven risk monitoring and public-private partnerships to unlock climate-resilient development.
- Urban Farming Strategies – Integrating hydroponics and digital platforms to transform food systems and empower women and youth.
- Blue-Green Tourism Systems (Blu-GET Africa) – Promoting coastal resilience through smart tourism platforms, early warning tools, and agritourism innovation.
Each proposal embedded innovation through digitalization and multi-level stakeholder engagement, enabling five actor groups—government, private sector, civil society, academia, and communities—to co-implement solutions for climate resilience.
Gender as a Cross-Cutting Enabler
Gender was strongly considered across all service offers:
- Women in Green targeted systemic barriers in agriculture and energy, proposing tailored financial products, climate-smart crop training, and digital cooperatives.
- Digitalization Service Offer integrated gender-sensitive curricula and rural bootcamps to improve digital literacy among women and youth.
- Circular Waste Management emphasized women’s empowerment through green job creation and cooperative-led recycling.
- Africa Tech Summit included dedicated sessions spotlighting women in tech leadership.
- Urban Agriculture prioritized training women in climate-smart farming and entrepreneurship, coupled with financial literacy and access to green finance products tailored for women-led cooperatives.
- Climate Services Offer integrated gender-sensitive climate finance, enabling women farmers in drought-prone regions to access index-based insurance and mobile financial services, while promoting their participation in green SME development and governance processes.
- Blu-GET Africa emphasized women’s empowerment in coastal communities through capacity-building for agritourism and fisheries, entrepreneurship programs, and leadership roles in climate action and environmental preservation.
These measures mainstreamed gender across resource management tools and policies, ensuring that women are not only beneficiaries but active drivers of climate resilience, digital transformation, and sustainable development.
UNDP CMR Donors engagement meeting
UNDP
The Lab’s Approach: Innovation Meets Resource Mobilization
The Lab’s approach of linking innovation with resource mobilization included:
- Conducting donor engagement workshop for climate-related proposals, Africa Tech Summit and Digitalization.
- Developing donor mapping tools for Women in Green, Horizon Scanner, and climate-related proposals—leveraging AI tools to identify potential donors, along with their strategic alignment.
- Following insights from the donor workshop, where donors in Cameroon prefer 1:1 outreach rather than workshops, the Lab conducted targeted 1:1 outreach with donors mapped for Climate Finance, Urban Farming, and Blu-GET Africa.
- Same went for the Horizon Scanner (HS) platform proposal, which is UNDP’s response to the growing need for anticipatory governance, that was originally planned as a virtual donor workshop, the engagement strategy pivoted to 1:1 outreach, to suit the Cameroonian context.
What Worked Well: Multi-Stakeholder Engagement and Global Visibility
A standout success was the multi-stakeholder engagement model, demonstrated during the resource mobilization workshop where IOM committed to integrating proposals with its green reintegration, diaspora engagement, and private sector strategies. This collaborative approach leveraged development enablers such as:
- Big data analytics
- Strategic foresight
- Collective intelligence
Additionally, donor interest—including potential synergies with Mastercard Foundation & Colombia’s ICT Ministry- and visibility through global foresight platforms like UNDP Futures Portal, Dubai Future Forum, and UN2.0 side events—amplified the proposals’ reach and positioned them for systemic transformation. These factors collectively strengthened the enabling environment for climate innovation, ensuring that central, regional, and communal actors are equipped to implement forward-looking solutions for resilience and green growth.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Despite strong design and strategic intent, the lab’s approach faced systemic issues in feedback loops, timing, and internal alignment, which need to be addressed to ensure future success. The lab’s journey insights resulted into the below lessons learned:
Lessons Learned:
- Adopt a phased donor engagement strategy prioritizing 1:1 meetings over group workshops.
- Establish real-time feedback loops and mandatory pre-engagement consultations to avoid delays.
- Strengthen internal coordination mechanisms to prevent duplication and align initiatives under a unified roadmap.
- Leverage development enablers such as digital collaboration platforms, big data analytics, foresight-driven engagement and cloud-based systems for proposal tracking.
Capitalize on global foresight platforms- like Dubai Future Forum visibility- and partners’ interest—as IOM’s existing network and projects—to amplify advocacy and attract investment.
Strategic Positioning for UNDP Cameroon
Through desk research, AI tools, collective intelligence and localized foresight, UNDP Cameroon is now positioned to lead in the following areas:
- Climate Finance
- Women in Green Sectors
- Urban Farming
- Africa Tech Summit
- Digitalization
- Waste Management
- Big Data Futures Platforms
- Cross-African Coastal Trade
- Resource Mobilization Streams
Conclusion: A Blueprint for Inclusive Innovation and Sustainable Development
UNDP Cameroon’s Accelerator Lab has demonstrated how innovation, when paired with strategic foresight and inclusive design, can transform governance, climate resilience, and economic empowerment. By integrating insights from service offers, donor engagements, and AI-driven research, the Lab has laid a strong foundation for future-proof development. The next phase will focus on scaling impact, deepening partnerships, and unlocking new resource streams to accelerate progress toward the SDGs.