Rinchi
TechInAfrica – GSM Association (GSMA) is organizing a program called GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chain. The program is calling for agri-tech startups with digital solutions that are impactful to smallholding farmers’ financial inclusion, livelihood, as well as climate resilience.
The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chain helps agri-tech startups with impactful solutions to scale and grow, offering up to eight grants of £220,000 each. For organizations such as agribusinesses and cooperatives, procuring from smallholders that focus on the lower class who live less than $2 per day.
The program will select eight solutions and provide £220,000 grants to help them develop their solutions with a duration of 24 months or 2 years. Each application will thoroughly be reviewed and assessed through two stages. Firstly, applicants will be assessed by their project objectives, proposed partners, and strategies on the concept note stage. Then, selected applicants will be invited to the next stage which is the business plan stage that will take place sometime in August.
At this stage, they have to outline their project strategies to implement and scale the solution, a budget calculation on how they will spend the grant, and a work plan for a year period of implementation.
Besides providing the eight selected startups with £220,000 grants, GSMA will also help them in doing market research, user-centric design, business intelligence, user-testing with agribusiness stuff and smallholders.
Furthermore, for startups which get selected to the concept note stage but are not selected to the next stage have the opportunity to join the GSMA AgriTech Priority Learning Partners Initiative. This initiative allows them to attend events, including webinars on the topic of enterprise solutions for the last mile.
For agri-tech startups interested in joining the program, click here to apply. The deadline is until July 31, 2019.
Source: technext.ng
