Deadline: 22 July 2019

The European Union (EU) is currently accepting proposals from eligible organizations for a program entitled “Increased Participation of Smallholder Farmers in Market-Integrated, Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chains and Improved Access to Finance, Services and Inputs as well as Investment Opportunities”.

Objectives

• The global objective of this call for proposals is to support the Government of Zambia’s policy objectives to reduce rural poverty and malnutrition and to improve rural livelihoods.
• The specific objective of this call for proposals is to better integrate farmers and agribusiness actors, within their value chain, through the establishment of a grant scheme providing incentives to the development of the smallholder agricultural sector in Zambia.

Priorities

The priorities of this Call for Proposals are to:

• Increase investment in agriculture (including fish farming) and support value chain actors such as agribusinesses. This will be achieved by directly providing grants and facilitating access to loans, with the aim of incentivising greater smallholder farmer commercialisation and integration into Value Chains.
• Facilitate the creation and strengthening of smallholder farmer and agribusiness associations as well as the linkages between them. This will encourage:
  • Diversification, innovation and entrepreneurial ship within the agricultural sector leading to an increase in both overall production and the range of products produced.
  • Access to higher value markets for smallholder farmers.
  • Greater efficiencies in terms of interactions between sector actors as well as financial institutions.
• Generate employment opportunities, in particular for women and youth, in both agricultural production and upstream & downstream agribusinesses.

Size of Grants

Any grant requested under this call for proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:

• minimum amount: EUR 24,000,000.00
• maximum amount: EUR 26,000,000.00

Location

Actions must take place in the following country: Zambia.

Duration

The initial planned duration of an action may not be lower than 48 months nor exceed 60 months.

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead applicant
  • In order to be eligible for a grant, the lead applicant must:
    • be a legal person and
    • be a specific type of organisation such as: non-governmental organisation, public sector operator, local authority, international (inter-governmental) organisation as defined by Article 43 of the rules of application of the EU Financial Regulation  and
    • be established in a Member State of the European Union or a country which is a party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area or a Member State of the OECD or Zambia. For British applicants: please be aware that eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant. Unless sector-specific eligibility rules provide otherwise, if the United Kingdom withdraws from the EU during the grant period without concluding an agreement with the EU ensuring in particular that British applicants continue to be eligible, applicants will cease to receive EU funding (while continuing, where possible to participate) or will be required to leave the project on the basis of Article 12.2 e) of the General Conditions of the grant agreement’.
    • This obligation does not apply to international organisations and
    • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary and
    • be willing to sign a commitment not to disclose confidential financial information and to avoid conflicts of interest with financial institutions directly or indirectly involved in complementary funding to this Call for Proposals.
• Co-applicant(s)
  • Co-applicants participate in designing and implementing the action, and the costs they incur are eligible in the same way as those incurred by the lead applicant.
  • Co-applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria as applicable to the lead applicant himself
• Affiliated entity(ies)
  • The lead applicant and its co-applicant(s) may act with affiliated entity(ies).
  • Only the following entities may be considered as affiliated entities to the lead applicant and/or to co-applicant(s):
    • Only entities having a structural link with the applicants (i.e. the lead applicant or a co-applicant), in particular a legal or capital link.
    • This structural link encompasses mainly two notions:
      • Control, as defined in Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings:
        • Entities affiliated to an applicant may hence be:
          • Entities directly or indirectly controlled by the applicant (daughter companies or first-tier subsidiaries). They may also be entities controlled by an entity controlled by the applicant (granddaughter companies or second-tier subsidiaries) and the same applies to further tiers of control;
          • Entities directly or indirectly controlling the applicant (parent companies). Likewise, they may be entities controlling an entity controlling the applicant;
          • Entities under the same direct or indirect control as the applicant (sister companies).
      • Membership, i.e. the applicant is legally defined as a e.g. network, federation, association in which the proposed affiliated entities also participate or the applicant participates in the same entity (e.g. network, federation, association) as the proposed affiliated entities.

How to Apply

• The application procedure consists of two phases:
  • Concept notes
  • Full applications
• The concept note together with the declaration by the lead applicant must be submitted at the address given on the website.

For more information, please visit https://bit.ly/2KFqshn and download the guidelines.