One year on: how the EIC Horizon Prize shaped affordable high-tech for humanitarian aid
- ›The EIC Horizon Prize for Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid awarded five winners €1 million each in September 2020 to scale proven tech solutions.
- ›Winners include start-ups, SMEs and humanitarian organisations working on fire detection, LoRaWAN water monitoring, recyclable solar lanterns and phone chargers, 3D-printed prosthetics and drone-assisted demining.
- ›Prize money helped pilot new deployments, speed product improvements and provide financial breathing room during COVID-19 supply disruptions.
- ›The award produced visibility and legitimacy but did not remove structural scaling barriers such as fragmented humanitarian procurement, fragile supply chains and the need for sustained funding.
- ›The European Commission communication COM(2021)110 and humanitarian actors stress that dedicated, longer term investment and coordination are still required to turn techno-innovations into durable impact.
One year on: the EIC Horizon Prize and affordable high-tech for humanitarian aid
In September 2020 the European Innovation Council awarded the EIC Horizon Prize on Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid to five proven technology solutions. Each winner received one million euro. The prize was explicitly designed to surface cost effective, deployable technologies that address urgent humanitarian needs across five categories: shelter, water and sanitation, energy, health and medical care, and an open category. After twelve months the award has generated measurable short term effects for many winners, primarily in the form of visibility, pilot deployments and targeted product improvements. However scaling these technologies in the fragmented humanitarian environment remains difficult and prize money is not a substitute for sustained investment or systemic change.
The winners and their technologies
| Category | Winner | Technology / purpose |
| Shelter and related assistance | Lumkani (South African SME) | Low-cost community-wide early fire detection and alert system for dense settlements such as slums and refugee camps |
| Water, hygiene and sanitation | UNHCR (LoRaWAN Monitoring) | Remote monitoring with LoRaWAN sensors for water tanks and reservoirs to optimise water trucking and supply management in refugee settings |
| Energy | Bright Products AS (BRIGHT Move, Norway) | Affordable, recyclable and rapidly deployable solar lantern combined with a phone charging device for displaced people |
| Health and medical care | Handicap International / Humanity & Inclusion (TeReFa) | Digital 3D scanning and 3D printing to produce affordable prosthetic and orthotic devices |
| Open category | Handicap International / Humanity & Inclusion (Odyssey2025) | Use of drones to improve efficiency and safety of mine clearance and land release operations |
What changed in year one: wins, pilots and product shifts
How winners reinvested the prize money
Prize recipients used the money in three main ways. First, to accelerate technical development for market fit and durability, for example improving recyclability or adding features to monitoring systems. Second, to run pilot deployments in new geographies or communities. Third, to create spillover benefits for broader innovation efforts. Handicap International used part of its award to set up an internal Innovation Fund to back additional humanitarian technology initiatives beyond the projects directly awarded. These activities show how a single prize can seed multiple follow-on efforts within organisations.
Why a prize helps and where it falls short
Prizes achieve several immediate, measurable effects. They generate public recognition, simplify early fundraising conversations, and allow fast, targeted work on product development or pilots. They can also nudge large aid organisations to test new approaches. At the same time the prize model has clear limits. Prizes do not change procurement rules, they do not create predictable multi-year operating budgets, and they cannot on their own solve structural problems such as donor fragmentation, limited local procurement, or highly risk averse purchasing by major humanitarian agencies. Victories in a prize competition must be followed by concerted efforts to integrate the technologies into procurement pipelines, to underwrite scale, and to support local partners who will operate and maintain equipment over time.
How the EU frames humanitarian innovation alongside policy
Technical notes on the winning solutions
Indicators to watch and next steps
If prizes are to contribute to longer term humanitarian impact they should be linked to follow-on mechanisms. Relevant metrics to monitor include the number of beneficiaries reached,sustained uptime and maintenance rates for deployed devices, total cost of ownership over time, local partner involvement and local manufacturing or servicing capacity. Policy actions that would help convert prize success into persistent impact include: multi-year flexible grants for scaling, inclusive procurement rules that enable SMEs and local suppliers, pooled financing instruments to reduce donor fragmentation and channels to support local maintenance and spare parts supply chains.
Conclusions
The EIC Horizon Prize succeeded in finding and rewarding tested, affordable technologies that address clear humanitarian problems and in giving winners short term capacity to pilot and improve their solutions. The prize model delivers valuable visibility and catalytic funding but does not replace the need for systemic reforms in humanitarian procurement and for predictable multi-year investments. For technical innovations to reach scale they need follow up through flexible funding, structured procurement pathways and investment in local maintenance and operating capacity. The EU’s policy documents and humanitarian actors recognise these needs and call for complementary instruments alongside prizes to convert innovation into sustained impact for vulnerable communities.