Deadline: July 31, 2019.

The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains aims to scale digital solutions for the agricultural last mile and improve smallholders’ financial inclusion, livelihood and climate resilience.

The Fund prioritises enterprise services targeted at organisations (e.g. agribusiness, cooperatives, etc.) procuring from smallholders with the focus on those living on less than USD 2 per day.

All eligible applicants at Concept Note stage, irrespective of whether they ultimately receive grant under this Innovation Fund, will be invited to join the GSMA AgriTech Priority Learning Partners Initiative, where they will gain access to a number of knowledge sharing resources and events, including webinars on the topic of enterprise solutions for the last mile.

 

CATEGORIES

1. MOBILE MONEY DRIVEN CATEGORY: Open to mobile money providers in partnership with AgriTech vendors who are developing, implementing, launching and/or scaling enterprise services (B2B2C) which digitise the agricultural last mile procurement and communication with smallholders.

2. DATA DRIVEN CATEGORY: Open to AgriTech organisations who have already scaled a last mile agriculture digitisation service and established a model for generating digital farmer records and explored linking farmer records with financial service providers.

 

ELIGIBILITY

1. The innovation fund is open to lead applicants operating in, and intending to implement their project, in a specific list of countries in Asia and Africa as detailed in the Term sheet.

2. The lead applicant, agribusiness partners/clients and financial service providers must have an existing presence in the country of implementation. In the case of the mobile money driven category, the Fund is flexible on having international AgriTech partners.

3. Academic organisations can be an implementing partner, but cannot be a lead applicant.

4. AgriTechs can apply as the lead applicant for the data driven category only. Mobile Money Providers/Mobile Network Operators must be the lead applicants for the mobile money driven category, but can include AgriTechs as part of the consortium for this category.

 

BENEFITS

1. Up to eight grants of £220,000 each are being made available to support projects of 24 months duration.

2. In addition, the GSMA will provide in-kind support and consultancy to assist the development of business plans, and service implementation through market research, user-centric design, business intelligence, user-testing with agribusiness staff and smallholders.

 

APPLICATION

Applications for funding across both categories are assessed through a two-stage application process.

• Concept Note: The first step will be to submit a Concept Note, which outlines the project objectives, lists proposed partners, demonstrates the consortium’s capacity to deliver the project and explains how the project fits within wider strategy of the business owner.
• Business Plan: A short-list of applicants whose Concepts Notes meet the objectives and eligibility requirements of the Fund will be invited to develop a Business Plan which will further outline the strategy for implementing and scaling the service; provide a budget projection with an indication of how the grant is to be spent, and a workplan for the 24 month implementation period.

 

OFFICIAL LINK

 

Click here to apply