Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Agribusiness Challenge Fund

Apply today for the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity Agribusiness Challenge Fund.

The Mastercard Foundation’s Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is the second phase of their initiative. In 2014, the MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity was launched as the first phase of an eight-year initiative. That Fund assisted 38 participants from 15 African nations in developing and growing financial goods and services for the rural population, with a strong emphasis on agriculture. One notable feature is that the Fund provided almost 5.3 million people with access to financial goods and services, surpassing the initial objective of 1 million.

As a result of this success and learnings gathered, the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity, a new, seven-year, US$ 126 million Fund was established in 2023. This Fund 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.

Countries of Focus:

• The Fund 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.

Eligibility:

• 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.

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.

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