The Mastercard Foundation Fund for SMEs, Resilience and Prosperity
The Mastercard Foundation Fund for SMEs, 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 Fund is the second phase of a program initiated by the Mastercard Foundation. The first phase, known as the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity, was an eight-year program launched in 2014. This Fund supported 38 participants from 15 African countries in innovating and scaling financial products and services aimed at the rural population, with a significant focus on agriculture. An outstanding achievement of this Fund was enabling over 5.3 million people to access financial products and services, surpassing the initial target of 1 million.
The primary objective of the Resilience and Prosperity Fund is to enhance enterprise growth, catalyze, scale-up, and sustain the creation of dignified work opportunities for young women, men, individuals with disabilities, and refugee youth.
Interventions of the Mastercard Foundation Fund for SMEs, for Resilience and Prosperity
The Fund for Resilience and Prosperity aims to address a wide range of SME-specific challenges and macro issues through four key interventions:
1. Challenge Fund: Offering direct financial support through a challenge fund to address the resource flow barriers faced by SMEs seeking to scale-up and create sustainable employment opportunities for young individuals.
2. Connect Fund: Providing investor readiness support to SMEs and facilitating partnerships with potential financiers to ensure growth and sustainability.
3. Technical Assistance (TA): Offering technical assistance and capacity building to address barriers related to human capital and market access.
4. Convening and influencing: Bringing together relevant stakeholders to foster an enabling business environment through established partners and digital platforms, driving systematic change to address issues hindering the creation of work opportunities for youth, especially young women.
Thematic Sectors
The Fund will concentrate on SMEs that are implementing solutions in three key sectors: agriculture, climate adaptation, and the digital economy.
For more information about the resilience and prosperity fund, visit the official website.
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