Christopher Fabian (born April 18, 1980) is a technologist who works for UNICEF. He founded technology and finance initiatives in both the public and private sector, including the creation in 2006, of UNICEF's Innovation Unit.
Fabian is an advocate of exploring new technology, and taking a "venture-style" approach to investments in the public sector. In this vein, he took part in the launch of the UNICEF’s Innovation Fund, the United Nations Innovation Network at the UN Chief Executives' Board, UNICEF's Cryptocurrency Fund, and the Digital Public Goods Alliance.
Fabian regularly holds talks and lectures on the impact of technology on sustainable development.
Before joining UNICEF, Fabian taught in Lebanon and founded companies in Africa and the Middle East, including a web portal in Tanzania.[1]
Work at UNICEF
Chris Fabian speaks about connectivity and data fairness and equity at the ITU's AI summit in Geneva.
He co-founded UNICEF's Office of Innovation in 2006, which focuses on connecting those with good ideas to those with the means to take them to scale.[2] From 2007-2017, Fabian has been Senior Advisor on Innovation to the Executive Director at UNICEF.
In its early days, the Office of Innovation developed open source tools for improving basic health and communication in low-infrastructure regions. It helped build the largest mobile health system in the world in Nigeria, which reported on more than 17M births by SMS. Other tools include U-Report, which enables over 3 million young people in 34 developing and developed countries to be connected to decision makers via SMS, and globally via Twitter.[3] The Office of Innovation has also used real-time SMS to help stop the spread of Ebola,[4] smartphones to register children after a disaster, and tablet-based games to teach kids in Sudan.[5][6]
Fabian has advocated for technologists in the development space to incorporate The Principles for Digital Development[7] (first created by UNICEF and USAID). These Principles, such as be open source, build with local technologists, and build for sustainability, are used widely in the international development community.
In 2011, Fabian advised on the creation of a framework of innovations labs linking WHO, UNDP, UNICEF as well as public and private-sector partners around in-country innovation. In 2013, Fabian helped launch the Child Friendly Technology Framework (CFT), 52 worksheets used for brainstorming and project planning when an idea for a project with a technology component is focused on children and adolescents. In 2015, Fabian designed the first Global Innovation Summit for Children, co-organised by UNICEF and the Ministry Foreign Affairs of Finland.
UNICEF Innovation Fund
In 2015 he led the launch of UNICEF’s Innovation Fund,[8] a pooled funding vehicle built to quickly assess, fund and scale companies, teams, and ideas that have been developed in new and emerging markets.[9][10]
In 2016, it added a UNICEF Ventures fund for small, early-stage investments.[10] in 2016, Fabian has worked to build platforms that can allow for rapid development, testing, and deployment of new technologies and approaches to solving problems. Ventures work has included investment in “frontier technology” such as Drones, UAVs, data science and machine learning. Examples include the UNICEF Drone Corridor in Malawi, in 2016,[11][12] and the "Magic Box" platform for working with large realtime datasets. The Magic Box platform allows companies like IBM, Google, and Telefonica to pool data so it can be used to make realtime decisions in emergencies.[13][14][15]
As of 2020, the Innovation Fund held USD $20 million and has made over 60 investments in open source technology companies in 40 countries.
Other ventures
In 2018, with Robert Opp of WFP, he created the United Nations Innovation Network at the UN Chief Executives' Board. This informal network spanned 1400 staff from all UN agencies and was 'decentralized' in its governance.[16][17]
In 2019, Fabian led UNICEF's launch of the first Cryptocurrency Fund in the United Nations. This Fund takes Ethereum or Bitcoin, holds it in its native form, and allows UNICEF to disperse it, as cryptocurrency, to open-source technology startups.[18] The same year, Fabian also launched GIGA [19] with Doreen Bogdan-Martin of ITU to finance connectivity for every school in the world. He and Sunita Grote were selected as one of WIRED Magazine's "WIRED25" for their work on building realtime maps of school connectivity, and creating financing partnerships based on aggregated connectivity demand.[20]
In 2019, he also led the development of the Digital Public Goods Alliance [21] - a platform built with the Government of Norway, Sierra Leone's DSTI (Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation) run by Minister David Sengeh, and India's iSpirit to identify and support open source software for public good.
Fabian believes that major global trends in technology and evolving power structures systematically and consistently affect poor people more negatively than wealthy ones [22] and speaks about how public sector money and investing should be used to create public value and public capital, rather than simply continue and extend systems of inequality.
Fabian has said that he believes technology is not the end-product of innovation, but a driver of new ways of thinking about development problems. He talks about open-source projects, learning from failure, and having solutions designed and built by local talent.[23]
Fabian was also an Executive Producer of the virtual-reality film Clouds Over Sidra,[24] created by Vrse.works. The film follows Sidra, a 12-year-old girl that has fled her home in Syria due to the ongoing crisis and found herself in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp.
Awards and Affiliations
Board Member, International Advisory Board, European Parliament Science and Technology Options Assessment Centre for AI
The United Nations Foundation is a charitable organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that supports the United Nations and its activities. It was established in 1998 with a $1billion gift to the United Nations by philanthropist Ted Turner, who believed the UN was crucial for addressing the world's problems. Originally primarily a grantmaker, the UN Foundation has evolved into a strategic partner to the UN, mobilizing support to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and help the UN address issues such as climate change, global health, gender equality, human rights, data and technology, peace, and humanitarian responses. The UN Foundation's main work occurs through building public-private partnerships, communities, initiatives, campaigns, and alliances to broaden support for the UN and solve global problems. The UN Foundation has helped build awareness and advocate for action on, among others, antimicrobial resistance, regional action on climate change, local implementation of the SDGs, as well as global campaigns such as Nothing But Nets against malaria, the Measles & Rubella Initiative, the Clean Cooking Alliance, Girl Up, Shot@Life, and the Digital Impact Alliance, among others. In March 2020, the UN Foundation was also a key founder of the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), helping to raise over $200million USD within the first six weeks to support the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization. It was founded in the UK in 1919, the goal being to improve the lives of children worldwide.
China United Network Communications Group is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator. Originally founded as a wireless paging and GSM mobile operator, it currently provides a range of services including mobile network, long-distance, local calling, data communication, Internet services, and IP telephony. As of 2022, China Unicom is the third-largest wireless carrier in China and the sixth largest mobile provider in the world.
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of natural science, technology, and social science. Different methods can be used to disburse funding, but the term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. It is often measured via Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD).
Strive Masiyiwa is a London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and executive chairman of international technology groups Econet Global and Cassava Technologies.
Clean technology, also called cleantech or climatetech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Clean technology includes a broad range of technology related to recycling, renewable energy, information technology, green transportation, electric motors, green chemistry, lighting, grey water, and more. Environmental finance is a method by which new clean technology projects can obtain financing through the generation of carbon credits. A project that is developed with concern for climate change mitigation is also known as a carbon project.
UNICEF, originally the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, officially United Nations Children's Fund since 1953, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The organization is one of the most widely known and visible social welfare entities globally, operating in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF's activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) office responsible for the procurement and development of medical countermeasures, principally against bioterrorism, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as pandemic influenza and emerging diseases. BARDA was established in 2006 through the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and reports to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The office manages Project BioShield, which funds the research, development and stockpiling of vaccines and treatments that the government could use during public health emergencies such as chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) attacks.
RapidSMS is a web framework based on the Django web framework which extends the logic and capabilities of Django to communicate with SMS messages. Initial development was done by UNICEF's Innovation Unit for use in mobile data collection and polls. A side effect of the work was pygsm, a Python library for interacting with GSM modems, including cell phones which handle the Hayes command set. The software has been deployed in numerous countries, including Senegal, Mauritania, Uganda, Somalia, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, and Ethiopia.
Guinea faces a number of ongoing health challenges.
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A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain, with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
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Science and technology in Tanzania describes developments and trends in higher education, science, technology, innovation policy, and governance in the United Republic of Tanzania since the turn of the century.
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