Value Chain Funding for the Pacific – Introducing the Agri-Business Facility
The Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) is a project launched in 2020 and designed as a pan-African knowledge and advisory hub. You might have heard of the Farmer Business School (FBS) training which has mainly been implemented in Africa, but also partly in some Asian countries. ABF supported the introduction, adaptation of training materials and implementation of the agribusiness trainings.
Since March 2023, ABF together with the GIZ project MOVE-ComCashew, is implementing the Joint Action “Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains” which is a combined effort of the EU Directorate-General for International Partnerships (INTPA), the Organisation of African Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and the German Government through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Under this Joint Action ABF aims to contribute to economic and climate change resilience of the cocoa, maize and livestock (cattle, sheep, goats) value chains and to food security, increased income, and employment in the 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries under the Post-Cotonou agreement. Hence, ABF’s scope is now broadened to also cover parts of the Caribbean and Pacific.
ABF now focuses on activities in three main areas:
- ABF scales successful agribusiness training approaches and tools amongst others through self-paced e-learning offers and blended learning. The already existing Agribusiness e-Academy on www.atingi.org in English and French will be expanded to not only offer more courses covering e.g., climate-smart agribusiness, but also Spanish and Portuguese versions. All courses are interactive, available free of charge, and issue certificates. Competitions will be organized to foster the development of viable business projects for investments in resilient or climate-smart agribusiness by linking winners to e.g., financial institutions.
- The project also aims to mobilize additional resources for implementation by introducing and scaling an innovative financial instrument – the Matching Grant Fund (MGF) – that facilitates private investments and promotes the transformation of smallholder agribusinesses. This MGF is designed to maximize outreach across countries and the targeted value chains, foster excellence, and ownership and will support the upgrading of those value chains for competitiveness and resilience regarding climate change and markets. It includes a readiness programme to accompany potential applicants throughout the process. ABF will publish 2 calls for proposals on its website where potential partners can submit their concept notes for assessment. The best applicants will be taken under contract. During the implementation, ABF will advise on the adaptation and implementation of tried-and-tested agribusiness training approaches, connect partners to the established (master) trainer networks and provide further tools and approaches already developed.
- Experiences and achievements under the first two areas will be put to even more value for learning, cooperation, scaling, and institutionalization through various events such as expert talks, sharing of best practices, South-South cooperation, policy dialogue, and conferences.
The first call for proposals will be launched in September 2023 and will be accompanied by webinars explaining the application process, benefits like the access to tried-and-tested capacity development approaches, contract formats and of course providing answers to questions.
Your partners in ACP member states already had innovative ideas contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation in the cocoa, maize, cattle, sheep, and goat value chaisn but your project does not have the mandate to support in that regard? Let your project partners know about this funding opportunity!
Information will be available on www.agribusiness-facility.org from September onwards.
Link to the further materials
Contact Person
Key Buzzwords
Agribusiness, Matching Grant Fund, human capacity development, training, face-to-face, blended learning, online, South-South cooperation, best practices, ACP, maize, cocoa, livestock
