Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Agribusiness Challenge Fund

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Following the successful conclusion of the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity and the impact and insights gained from it, a new fund has emerged. The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is a seven-year, US$ 126 million Fund that aims to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across the agriculture, climate adaptation and digital economy sectors in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The main objective of the Fund is to unlock enterprise growth and catalyze, scale-up and sustain the creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men, young people with disabilities and refugee youth.

Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Interventions

The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity aims to address a broad spectrum of SME-specific challenges as well as macro issues using four interventions:

Challenge Fund:

Offering direct financial support through a challenge fund to address the resource flow barriers faced by SMEs looking to scale-up and, in turn, create and sustain employment opportunities for young women and men

Connect Fund:

Providing investor readiness support to the SMEs and negotiation of partnerships with potential financiers to ensure sustainability and growth.

Technical Assistance (TA):

Adding value beyond financial support through technical assistance and capacity building to address the barriers concerning human capital and access to markets.

Convening and influencing:

Convening relevant stakeholders to encourage an enabling business environment through experienced partners and digital platforms to drive systematic change and address the issues that impede the creation of work opportunities for the youth, especially young women.

Thematic Sectors

The Fund will focus on SMEs that are implementing their solutions in 3 key sectors; agriculture, climate adaptation and digital economy.

Each of these will have competitions that SMEs can apply to for a chance to be selected as Fund participants.

Agribusiness Challenge Fund

The Agribusiness Challenge Fund is now open from till 22 November 2024, with three harvest periods in between. The challenge will be open to SME applications from any country as long as the projects are being implemented in one or more of the 20 focus countries and meet the eligibility criteria.

The Agribusiness SMEs will be applying to receive matching grants of between US$ 500,000 and US$ 2,500,000 for their projects that can create work opportunities for young women and men, young people with disabilities or refugee youth.

Eligibility Requirements

Each challenge fund sector is different. However, all challenges will seek proposals from SMEs that are innovative, commercially viable, and that will create dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men, young people with disabilities or refugee youth. In each challenge , applicants will be required to meet certain criteria.
Selection will be based on applications meeting a certain threshold of the Fund selection criteria. Read more about this on the specific challenge page.

Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Countries of Focus

The Fund’s objective is to support SMEs in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will ensure a distribution of SME-based solutions that can sustainably create dignified and fulfilling work for young men and women, young people with disabilities and refugee youth even after the end of the program.
The countries are Benin, Burundi, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

How to Apply

Click Here to Apply for Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Agribusiness Challenge Fund.

Deadline: November 22nd, 2024

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