GIZ’s Agricultural Innovation Fund looking to award up €50k in support to startups

Through its Agricultural Innovation Fund, the GIZ, the German agency for international co-operation, is looking to award up to €50 000 to three winners with innovative agriculture ideas.

Specifically, the GIZ is looking to support innovators with innovations that aim to make the agricultural and food sector more efficient and sustainable.

These could be for instance a new kind of harvester, a new process design or a new way of co-operating with one another — all of which must be suitable for GIZ’s partner countries.

The competition is open to startups and small businesses from GIZ’s participating partner countries in Africa and South-East Asia.

The GIZ’s Agricultural Innovation Fund is looking for startups with innovative ideas on how to make agriculture more sustainable

In Africa these countries are: Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia

Applications are close on 31 March.

Each participant can apply for one of the following categories:

• Mechanisation
• Digitalisation
• Renewable energies

The three winners of each category will receive a support package which will be individually tailored to their innovation with a total value of up to €50 000.

The package of the second-place winners is worth up to €20 000 and the third-place winners up to €10 000.

Together with the winners we will decide what is necessary to develop the innovation most efficiently.

The support packages can contain the following elements, which can be selected individually or combined with each other:

• Knowledge and know-how: Finance for national and international experts to promote the development of a startup’s innovation.
• Coaching and training: Finance for coaching and training for startups and their team to build and develop more competence.
• Mentoring: Finance of experienced mentors who will advise and support startups that are selected.
• Networking contacts: Those startups selected can benefit from the extensive network that GIZ can offer with public, private and political partners. Startups can become part of the GIZ Innovation Community and exchange ideas with other companies worldwide.
• Studies: Finance for market studies. This includes market analyses and feasibility studies.

Featured image: skeeze via Pixabay