The challenge

Humanitarian supply chains operate in constantly changing environments. WFP needs to determine where to buy food, where to send it, where to store it, when to purchase it and how to use limited financial resources efficiently.

These decisions become particularly difficult during new emergencies, when previous plans may no longer be appropriate because demand, funding, markets, access and operational conditions can change.

What is SCOUT?

SCOUT uses optimization AI to support WFP’s global supply chain planning. It models the supply chain network and provides data-driven insights to help inform decisions about sourcing, delivery, inventory and storage.

The system also supports replanning the corporate inventory supply chain by helping identify appropriate purchasing times and storage locations.

WFP describes SCOUT as a planning and optimization solution within its humanitarian supply-chain operations. The material provided does not describe it as independently making final humanitarian decisions.

What has SCOUT achieved?

WFP reports US$6.2 million in savings over two years:

• 2024: US$2 million in savings from replanning the corporate inventory supply chain for one commodity in WFP operations in West Africa.
• 2025: US$4.2 million in additional savings.

WFP also reports that, in 2023, SCOUT’s rapid replanning capacity helped avoid an interruption of nutrition activities affecting 270,000 beneficiaries over the course of a month.

The system reportedly reduces emergency supply-chain planning lead time from two weeks to one day.

WFP further states that its AI forecasting engine cuts planning costs by 10% and projects that SCOUT could generate more than US$25 million in annual savings as it scales.

Evidence note: The US$6.2 million figure represents reported savings for 2024–2025. The US$25 million figure is a projection and should not be presented as realized savings.

SCOUT and humanitarian decision-making

SCOUT addresses a planning problem in which multiple decisions are interconnected. A change in sourcing can affect inventory, storage, delivery and ultimately the availability of food for operations.

WFP describes cross-functional collaboration as part of the planning approach, alongside considerations such as operational challenges, accessibility, market capacity, efficiency and effectiveness.

This is important when considering the role of AI in humanitarian operations: the value of an optimization system depends not only on its computational outputs, but also on how those outputs are interpreted and used within operational decision-making.

A closer look from an M&E perspective

EvalCommunity perspective: The following questions are proposed for M&E professionals. They are not indicators reported by WFP in the SCOUT project description.

This chain highlights an important distinction: AI performance is not the same as programme performance.

An evaluation could therefore examine several levels:

• Technical: How accurate and reliable are the forecasts and optimization outputs?
• Planning: Does SCOUT improve the speed and quality of planning?
• Operational: Does it improve sourcing, inventory positioning or delivery?
• Programme: Does improved supply-chain performance reduce interruptions or improve timely assistance?
• Beneficiary: Are there observable effects on access, continuity or timeliness of assistance?

Potential evaluation questions

• How accurate are the system’s forecasts under different operating conditions?
• How often do planners accept, modify or reject system recommendations?
• Which operational constraints are represented in the optimization model?
• Which important contextual constraints may not be captured?
• How has planning time changed?
• How have supply-chain costs changed, and what factors contributed to the change?
• Are benefits consistent across commodities, locations and operational scenarios?
• Does faster replanning contribute to fewer supply interruptions?
• Are there operational risks or trade-offs associated with optimized plans?
• How are human judgement and contextual knowledge incorporated into final decisions?
• Do benefits differ across operational contexts or population groups?

What would a stronger evaluation examine?

A comprehensive evaluation could follow the system from its technical performance through to operational and programme-level effects.

• Baseline: planning time, costs, interruptions and operational performance before implementation.
• System performance: forecasting and optimization performance against appropriate reference methods.
• Human decision-making: how planners use, modify or reject recommendations.
• Operational outcomes: changes in procurement, inventory, delivery and emergency replanning.
• Programme outcomes: changes in continuity and timeliness of assistance.
• Equity: whether benefits or risks differ across operational contexts or population groups.
• Cost-effectiveness: implementation and operating costs compared with verified benefits.

What the available evidence does not establish

The WFP material provides reported financial and operational results, but it does not provide a complete independent impact evaluation covering forecast accuracy across all environments, human override rates, distributional effects or causal beneficiary-level outcomes.

These should therefore be treated as areas for further evaluation rather than conclusions that can be inferred from the project description.

Source: World Food Programme Innovation, SCOUT — “Rethinking WFP’s global supply chain planning.” Financial and operational results are reported by WFP. The M&E interpretation and proposed evaluation questions are developed by EvalCommunity and are not presented as WFP findings.