Shortlist drawn up for the multi-stakeholder partnerships!

Benin, Cotonou. It was a firework of ideas and innovations that will strengthen the cocoa, cashew, livestock, and maize value chains in the ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) countries in the future. From 9 till 13 September 2024, 39 experts from 15 countries have been working hard in the meeting rooms of the Azalai Hotel in Cotonou. The proposals for innovations will be financed by the Matching Grant Fund of the Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains project.

The objective of the Matching Grant Fund is to promote innovations from partners to make agricultural value chains more climate resilient, to promote sustainable growth, productivity, and profitability as well as to mobilise financial resources from the private sector and strengthen ownership. There were heated debates and a struggle for the best proposals. Individual evaluators presented particularly successful project proposals in short 3-minute presentations to convince their expert colleagues. Ideas such as the traceability of beef, zero-waste cashew processing and smarter use of cashew apples and shells, local chocolates with different flavours such as chilli, ginger, and pineapple, as well as organic fertiliser for maize and modern silos for storing maize were praised.

An overwhelming 438 proposals reached the project until 18 August 2024 from this third call seeking innovative concept notes. 194 proposals made it to the selection round in Cotonou. They do not contain any formal errors. In the end, seven proposals were shortlisted for cocoa, fourteen for livestock, fourteen for maize and twenty-three for cashew. To ensure that the decision can also be adequately represented to the donors at the Board Meeting, the evaluation experts elected two representatives: Mrs Janet Ngombalu from Kenya and Mohamed Porgo from Burkina Faso.

Chairpersons for the Evaluation Committee: Mrs. Janet Ngombalu from Kenya, and Mohamed Porgo, Burkina Faso

Mr Sylvestre Fandohan, advisor to the Minister of Agriculture in Benin and contact person for the Consultative International Cashew Council (CICC) in the Ministry, dismissed the evaluators. He urged the project teams to pay attention to sustainability and adaptation to climate change when monitoring the implementation of the multi-stakeholder partnerships. Subsequently Mr. Bastian Domke, component manager Private Sector Development of the Market-Oriented Value Chains for Jobs and Growth in the ECOWAS Region (MOVE) project, thanked the evaluation experts and the workshop organisation team for their hard work before wishing them safe travels to their homes.

The Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains is co-financed by the European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships (INTPA), the Organisation for African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Matching Grant Fund is implemented by two projects of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ): the MOVE-ComCashew and Agri-Business Facility (ABF) project.