Building Resilience And Prosperity With A Newly-Launched Fund For SMEs  

The Agribusiness Challenge Fund seeks to create work opportunities at scale for young people in sub-Saharan Africa by supporting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) working across 20 countries. SMEs that can create dignified and fulfilling work at scale for young women and men, young people with disabilities or refugee youth, can apply to the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Agribusiness Challenge Fund. 

The newly-launched Agribusiness Challenge Fund will provide the selected SMEs grants ranging from $500,000 to $2,500,000, over a three-year period. The support will be based on the applicants’ development stage, scalability, business model, and in accordance with agreed periodic milestone targets. Additional tailored technical assistance will also be available to successful applicants.  

The Agribusiness Challenge Fund is open to SME applications that meet certain eligibility criteria. For example, SMEs that can benefit from this support need to be focused on at least one of the following countries: Benin, Burundi, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda or Zambia. 

“The agriculture sector presents great opportunities for innovative SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa to grow, with opportunities to create dignified and fulfilling work for young people, especially young women, young people with disabilities and refugee youth,” says Smita Sanghrajka, Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Engagement Partner. 

The Agribusiness Challenge Fund is a rolling call for proposals, open for a period of nine months with periodic harvests or collections of applications to be assessed every 12 weeks. 

Unsuccessful applicants will have the opportunity to refine and resubmit their applications for subsequent harvests. The first application harvest of the rolling Agribusiness Challenge is on 7 June 2024. Interested SMEs can register and access the application platform through the Fund website www.frp.org. 

The objective of the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is to unlock enterprise growth and catalyze, scale-up and sustain the creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men. The Fund was established following the successful conclusion of the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity, which was in operation for eight years from 2014 to 2023 and supported 38 participant businesses from 15 countries in Africa. Those businesses were able to innovate and scale financial products and services targeting the rural population and further enable financial inclusion for over 5.3 million people. 

The Fund Manager for the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is KPMG Development Services Limited in partnership with Triple Line Consulting, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Partner.