Mastercard Foundation Fund for SMEs ($126 Million Funding)
The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is a seven-year, US$ 126 million Fund that aims to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across the agriculture, climate adaptation and digital economy sectors in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is the second phase of a program from the Mastercard Foundation. The first phase was the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity, an eight-year program established in 2014. That Fund supported 38 participants from 15 countries in Africa innovating and scaling financial products and services targeting the rural population with a large focus on agriculture. One major highlight is the Fund enabled over 5.3 million people to have access to financial products and services, exceeding an initial target of 1 million.
Now, the main objective of the Resilience and Prosperity Fund is to unlock enterprise growth and catalyze, scale-up and sustain the creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men, young people with disabilities and refugee youth.
Interventions of the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity
The Fund for Resilience and Prosperity aims to address a broad spectrum of SME-specific challenges as well as macro issues using four interventions:
1. Challenge Fund: Offering direct financial support through a challenge fund to address the resource flow barriers faced by SMEs looking to scale-up and, in turn, create and sustain employment opportunities for young women and men.
2. Connect Fund: Providing investor readiness support to the SMEs and negotiation of partnerships with potential financiers to ensure sustainability and growth.
3. Technical Assistance (TA): Provision of technical assistance and capacity building to address the barriers concerning human capital and access to markets.
4. Convening and influencing: Convening relevant stakeholders to encourage an enabling business environment through experienced partners and digital platforms to drive systematic change and address the issues that impede the creation of work opportunities for the youth, especially young women.
Thematic Sectors
The Fund will focus on SMEs that are implementing solutions in three (3) key sectors: agriculture, climate adaptation and digital economy.
Click here for more information about the resilience and prosperity fund.