Deadline: 19th September, 2012
The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF), Zimbabwe announces the opening of a third round of Zimbabwe Agribusiness Competition – ZW Round 3. This is being announced after successful completion of two AECF competitions in Zimbabwe.
The major objective of the AECF ZW remains to stimulate private sector businesses in Zimbabwe to find profitable ways of raising rural incomes by developing markets for products and services that meet the needs of the rural poor. The AECF ZW is a special competition open only to business ideas in agri-business and rural financial services that are to be implemented in Zimbabwe. AECF ZW R2 was funded by the Australian Government Aid Program, the UK Department for International Development in Zimbabwe (DFID) and the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF).
The AECF ZW R3 is funded by the Australian Government Aid Program, the UK Department for International Development in Zimbabwe (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
The AECF ZW makes funding available to private sector companies to support them in developing, testing and implementing new and innovative business ideas. AECF ZW funding takes the form of grants and repayable grants from a base of US$250 000 up to US$1.5m. A total of 19 businesses were awarded funding in R1 and R2 with aggregated funding in excess of US$10.5 in the form of grants and interest free loans. The business ideas include agricultural inputs and output marketing, seed multiplication and distribution, a selection of smallholder out-grower schemes and a rural finance initiative.
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