Opens

Feb 27 2024 00:50 (EST)

Deadline

Mar 19 2024 23:59 (EDT)

As part of UNCDF strategy ”Leaving no one behind in the digital era”, UNCDF is looking for legally established entities in Uganda with experience in fund management and a strong understanding of the Ugandan market to address the challenge of access to finance for the youth, women, and refugee-led agribusiness MSEs (including SHF enterprises, VSLAs, and Farmer cooperatives) in the regions of West Nile, Northern Uganda, Karamoja, and Southwestern Uganda, to act as Grant Fund Manager (GFM) to deploy and manage seed grants to MSEs as well as create linkages with other financing partners, to provide follow-on financing including but not limited to loans and guarantees.

This RFA forms part of a joint project with the World Food Programme (WFP) Agriculture Market Support (AMS) program aiming to increase employment and income for young men and women in the agricultural value chains and associated market systems. Interventions under this project include strengthening farmer institutions for collective marketing, creating additional pathways for smallholder farmers, farmer organizations, institutions, and agri-food systems actors to create, find new jobs and improve or expand existing work opportunities for young people and women in agriculture and related services.

The project aims to achieve this through provision of business development services (BDS), digitalization of MSEs and rural ag-related value chains with an overall goal of attracting the youth into on and off-farm businesses, increasing access to finance of youth, women, and refugees (e.g., digital loans, savings), as well as improving the last-mile service delivery for agriculture and allied services via outlets and agents in targeted communities.

On this intervention, UNCDF will identify and partner with at least 1 (one) Grants Fund Manager (GFM) who exhibits the capability and willingness to provide financial support to youth, women, and refugee-led agribusiness (Micro and small enterprises). The core function of the GFM will be administration of the fund and disbursement of micro-grants to selected beneficiaries while creating linkages with other investors for follow-on financing.

Through the GFM, UNCDF intends to provide funding for seed capital in the form of micro-grants (with transactional tickets of $200 - $1000) to selected grant applicants (MSEs). The beneficiary MSEs will be selected through challenge rounds to be run by the GFM. The pipeline of applicants to the challenge rounds will come from MSEs that will have received business development services (BDS) through the previous steps of the project. The GFM, working closely with UNCDF and its partners, will:

• Finalize the design, structure, and tools of the intervention and implement the challenge rounds.
• Use pre-agreed financing criteria, to select deserving beneficiaries for the grants.
• Conduct due diligence on selected MSEs to validate information and determine key risk areas and potential mitigants.
• Deploy and manage micro-grants to selected MSEs to pilot and further develop their agribusinesses.
• Create financing linkages and crowd-in-private capital. As these seed-funded agri-businesses/MSEs mature, the GFM should be in a position to either provide follow-on financing options (such as loans, guarantees, etc.) or provide linkages to follow-on financing for the MSEs.
• Ensure continuous and accurate monitoring and reporting.

The main outcome of the interventions under this RFA is to provide financing, through seed grant support, to at least 4,000 MSEs enabling youth, women, refugees, and SHF enterprises to pilot/scale their innovative business ideas in agriculture and allied services.

The project is expected to run until 30th September 2026 and will be undertaken in the West Nile, Northern, Karamoja, and Southwestern regions of Uganda.

In the proposal, the applicant should quote the costs for the project’s operations and management, including providing full-time resources that would engage with the MSEs and UNCDF in supporting the project implementation. UNCDF contributions are disbursed in UGX. The most successful applicant will be selected based on their execution capacity, experience, and outreach potential.

UNCDF will provide a grant and sign a Performance-Based Agreement (PBA) with the successful applicant who will implement the access to finance intervention as described above.

Inquiries to this request for applications may be submitted by email to uncdf.rfa@uncdf.org cc mildred.wengozi.b@uncdf.org. Please use in the subject email “GFM - Provision of Seed grants to agribusiness MSEs, VSLAs, and Cooperatives”

Please submit your proposal through this e-investment platform by 19 March 2024 23: 59 (EDT).

Submissions using other templates or sent by other electronic or non-electronic means will not be eligible.