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CALL FOR CONCEPT NOTES
Country: Malawi
Name of Project: Transforming Agriculture Through Diversification and Entrepreneurship (TRADE Programme)
Assignment Title: Agriculture Commercialization Innovation Fund (ACIF) matching grants for Commodities under the TRADE Programme
Reference No.: TRADEMW/2024/08/SMALLGRANTS/001
Date of IssueL 28th August 2024
1. Background
Transforming Agriculture through Diversification and Entrepreneurship (TRADE) Programme is a Government of Malawi 6-year initiative funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID). The overall goal of this programme is to contribute to improved sustainable livelihoods of rural people in Malawi through Value Chain commercialisation and resilience of rural poor and smallholder’s producers”.
TRADE Programme specifically seeks to:
- increase production and productivity by smallholder farmers;
- functionally upgrade smallholder farmers and the rural poor to undertake new functions such as processing, storage, and packaging to capture more value;
- improve horizontal linkages by strengthening the capacities of cooperatives to provide market access functions to smallholder farmers; and,
- Improve vertical linkages between stakeholders at different functional levels of the commodity chain, including the private sector.
TRADE supports rural entrepreneurs, focusing on youths and women to develop and sustain their agribusiness enterprise opportunities and ensuring that commodities are nutrition-sensitive. This objective is achieved through targeted support to smallholder farmers and non-farm actors to benefit from commodity markets, improved access to rural financial services, market and business development services and partnerships with the private sector. The programme directly contributes to Pillar 1 of MW 2063 and Strategic Objective 2 of the Malawi Country Strategic Opportunity (COSOP 2016-2021) “Smallholder households’ access remunerative markets and services”. It also contributes to Strategic Objective 1 of the COSOP by focusing on the promotion of climate-smart agriculture and the mainstreaming of nutrition in all interventions. Under the Ministry of Local Government as the lead agency, TRADE is being implemented under 3 interlinked components namely:
- Sustainable producer-private public partnerships;
- Enabling environment for smallholder commercialization and component; and,
- Institutional support and programme management.
Targeting 127,000 direct and 173,000 indirect households, TRADE Programme is implementing its activities covering eleven (11) districts of Mchinji, Ntchisi, Dedza, Blantyre, Kasungu, NkhataBay, Rumphi, Karonga, Lilongwe Rural, Thyolo and Chitipa focusing on seven (7) commodities namely groundnuts, soybean, sunflower, potato, dairy, beef and honey.
2. The ACIF Matching Grants – Small Window
As one way of accelerating its Agricultural Commercialization agenda, TRADE Programme provides Agricultural Commercialization Innovation Fund (ACIF) grants to qualifying projects.
The ACIF Grants – Small Window are administered under a matching concept, where the applicant pledges to contribute towards the project in cash and in kind.
The ACIF Grants – Small Window is specifically available to registered farmer groups (Cooperatives) and for projects with a ceiling of up to USD100,000.00 (One hundred thousand United States dollars). TRADE Programme shall contribute a maximum of 70% of the proposed project cost, while the applicant shall contribute 30% of the proposed project cost (where 10% is a mandatory cash contribution, going directly to the cost of the project).
The ACIF will specifically give priority to interventions that:
- Bring sustainable innovations to the value chain development of targeted commodities
- Create sustainable market linkages for the smallholder producers
- Increase production and productivity, incomes, and resilience of targeted commodities through Climate Smart Interventions (Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)/Natural Resources Management (NRM).
- Foster entrepreneurship and vertical diversification by smallholder farmers
- Value Chain investments that empower women, youth, and other marginalized and vulnerable groups.
- Value Chain investments that adhere to IFAD’s Social, Environmental and Climate Assessment Procedures (SECAP)
3. Call for Concept Notes
TRADE Programme now calls for concept notes from interested and eligible FOs, FBOs such as cooperatives and farmer groups who will promote the ACIF grants initiatives.
Applicants are advised that TRADE Programme is commodity and location specific (as provided under https://www.tradeprogramme.org/procurement-update ), therefore, only applications that target the specified TRADE EPAs, and the targeted commodities within these EPAs will be considered.
4. Review of Concept Notes
Concept Notes shall be reviewed by an independent team of reviewers called The Grants Review Committee (GRC), in line with the eligibility criteria that will be made available to the applicants or which may be downloaded from the TRADE Programme website.
The successful applicants will be informed and be called upon to develop full proposals.
5. How to Apply
Interested applicants should request the following by writing and/or emailing the addresses below or downloading documents from the TRADE website: https://www.tradeprogramme.org/procurement-update
- ACIF Small Grant Concept Note Submission format
- The General Conditions for the Utilization of the ACIF Grant Facility
- Eligibility Criteria for the ACIF concept notes
- List of EPAs and targeted commodities where TRADE Programme is operating
The requests/downloads for the documents shall stop at least 7 days (11th September 2024) before the deadline to allow applicants to prepare their respective concept notes.
6. Further information about the application form
Requests, Questions and/or inquiries should be sent to TRADE Programme no later than 7 days thus by 11th September 2024 before the deadline through email grants@tradeprogramme.org.
TRADE programme will have no obligation to respond to questions submitted after this day.
Responses to all questions received by the 7th day (11th September 2024) will be published on the TRADE Programme website.
7. Submission of concept notes
Interested applicants should submit their concept notes in electronic copies through email grants@tradeprogramme.org or through a link on https://www.tradeprogramme.org/opportunities or in hard copy to the address below no later than Wednesday, 18th September 2024 at 17:00 hrs.
Clearly Marked “Concept Note for ACIF Small Matching Grants”
8. All Concept Notes should be addressed to:
The National Programme Coordinator
Transforming Agriculture through Diversification and Entrepreneurship (TRADE)
Area 9 Plot Number 328
P.O. Box 2135
Lilongwe. Malawi.
Web: www.tradeprogramme.org
Applications submitted later than the stated deadline will not be evaluated and applicants that will exhibit prescribed Cash contributions will have an added advantage.
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