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. Applications for funding are assessed through a two-stage application process. 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 while the second step is a Business Plan that further outlines 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 workplan for the 24 month implementation period. The deadline for the concept note phase is 31 July 2019 while the deadline for the Business Plan submission is 31 October 2019.
