The Matching Grant Fund Call is closed – Impressive 426 concept notes received

13th November, 2023. On 10th November at 11:59 pm GMT, the Call for Concept Notes within the framework of the Matching Grant Fund (MGF) for resilient agricultural value chains – in this call for cocoa, maize, cattle, sheep, and goats – has been closed. An impressive 426 Concept Notes have been handed in by interested potential partners and consortia.

The call for Concept Notes for this MGF has been open for submission for 8 weeks, spanning from 18th September until 10th November. Interested parties working in the mentioned value chains in a member state of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) could hand in their project idea. An extensive support system consisting of several launch events to cater for English, French, Spanish and Portuguese speaking partners and the different time zones as well as webinars for further explanation has been provided by the Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) project team throughout the application phase. To ensure transparent communication and information dissemination, all questions asked and the corresponding answers, had been included in a FAQ section on the project’s website (https://www.agribusiness-facility.org/funding.html). After having a look at the submissions, an impressive 426 Concept Notes are registered from 42 OACPS member states covering all three regions – Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific. The breakdown by value chain is as follows: 245 concept notes for maize, 87 cattle, 52 cocoa, 31 goat and 11 sheep.

What are the next steps?
An international and independent Expert Committee consisting of 17 experts from 14 OACPS member states with a diverse professional background will evaluate the Concept Notes in an extensive workshop from 17th to 24th November in Cotonou, Benin. Depending on their background, committees for each value chain have been formed so that experts can focus on the value chain at hand and better compare the diverse submissions. To further ensure transparency and objectivity, each Concept Note will be evaluated by 3 experts. The final evaluation will then be a consolidation of the 3 evaluations made. At the end of the workshop, it will be clear which project ideas make it to the full proposal stage where the applicants receive support from the ABF team in developing a full proposal.

ABF is looking forward to the exciting upcoming weeks and already to starting implementation with the selected partners in 2024!

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