The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) is supporting business innovation based on agricultural research. If your company has a great business idea in this field, then you should compete for their attention in their special AECF RIB Window.
If your company has an innovative and potentially profitable commercial opportunity that will have a development impact, but the risks are holding you back, then the AECF RIB is for you. The RIB window is open for business opportunities throughout Africa and to both African and International applicants. RIB will not fund primary research it but will consider any idea which aims to turn existing (or near complete) Research Into a profitable Business.
The AECF is calling for proposals that combine profitability with developmental and social impact. Through the provision of grant and repayable grant funding, the AECF RIB window seeks to promote risk-taking and innovation to encourage established businesses to extend their core activities in ways that create opportunities for rural low-income people.
AECF envisages four broad groups of possible business ideas and applications for funding: :
- Partnerships between agribusinesses and agricultural research institutions, international and local. The lead applicant must be from the private sector but may, if appropriate, request funding to meet partner ARIs’ costs in implementing the proposal.
- Agribusinesses proposing to commercialize research and/or technologies already in the public domain and able to identify and acknowledge the source.
- Agribusinesses proposing to commercialize the results of their own R&D investment.
- Business ideas in the information and media services sector that relate to knowledge and technology transfer between researchers and farmers/agribusinesses.
The AECF offers to co-fund your business plan, with between US$250,000, and US$1.5 million. You must plan to invest at least the same amount from your own resources, in cash or kind but not counting land and fixed assets. You will have to complete an online application, or concept note, outlining your company, your business idea, its basis in agricultural research and how it will benefit the rural poor. The application is easy to fill in and has been set up so that you can edit, change or modify your concept at any time over the whole period that the competition is open.
AECF launched the RIB window on 1 March 2010 and the first round of the competition will stay open until May 17th. All complete applications will be marked by a team of assessors and the best will be asked to submit a more detailed business plan before the AECF’s Investment Committee decides on the winners.
