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.
Up to eight grants of £220,000 each are being made available to support projects of 24 months duration. 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.
Grants are available across two categories of application:
Mobile Money
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.
The proposed development or evolution of an enterprise service must include the following primary use-cases:
1.) Digitising procurement records and smallholder farmer profiles (static and dynamic information);
2.) Digitising payments to smallholder farmers via mobile money;
3.) Digitising communication and providing advisory services for smallholder farmers.
Data-Driven Category
Open to AgriTech organisations who have already scaled the last mile agriculture digitisation service and established a model for generating digital farmer records and explored linking farmer records with financial service providers.
The proposed evolution of these services must include the following primary use-cases:
1.) Digitising procurement records and smallholder farmer profiles (static and dynamic information) at a scale of at least 50,000 farmers in the proposed market;
2.) Using existing deployment data and digital records of smallholder farmers to provide financial inclusion services through partnerships with third-party organisations;
3.) Digitising communication and providing advisory services for smallholder farmers.
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 the 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 work plan for the 24 month implementation period.
All eligible applicants at Concept Note stage, irrespective of whether they ultimately receive a grant under this Innovation Fund, will be invited to join the GSMA AgriTech Priority Learning Partners Initiative, where they will gain access to knowledge sharing resources and events, including webinars on the topic of enterprise solutions for the last mile.
The deadline for applications is 31st July 2019 and click here to apply and for more details.
