Finding innovative solutions to the Migration Challenge

IOE teams up with Seedstars, a Swiss-based tech innovation hub, to promote skills mobility by launching a competition – the Migration Challenge – to find the most transformative products that bridge the information gaps in global migration systems.

Tech entrepreneurs from Latin America and Africa are invited to compete at a Technology and Innovation event - the Migration Challenge - at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Summit in Quito, Ecuador 20-24 January 2020.

More than 1000 delegates representing governments, businesses, civil society from around the world will attend the GFMD Summit. The Migration Challenge will be one of the key events focused on innovation during the Summit.

IOE and Seedstars are looking for start-ups from Latin America and Africa that create the most promising human resource, fintech, civictech, edtech, and other innovative products to span the information divide between employers and migrants and improve the implementation of migration policies.

Primary users of the product are governments, employers and migrants. 

The innovation should assist with better matching employment sectors facing skills shortages with trained regular migrants - expats, temporary workers, seasonal workers, intra-company transferees. Solutions should also provide ways for governments to share information and best practices to improve their policies, and it should provide migrant workers with access to financial, educational, labour mobility services.

The winner will be announced on 23 January 2020 during the closing plenary session. The winning start-up will take part in the Global Seedstars Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland to be held April 2020, and will benefit from 3-months acceleration scholarship for the Investment Readiness Program (IRP). The runners-up will be awarded with 2 months acceleration scholarship for IRP.

As an innovative organisation itself, IOE is the largest network of the private sector in the world, with more than 150 business and employer organization members. Skills mobility can be an important solution to the shortage of talent across the world.

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