The Confederation of Trade Associations (CTA) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) – an organisation that works to improve nutrition by promoting opportunities and establishing public and private partnerships – launched a fund for SMEs that produce nutritious food on Wednesday 15 May, as part of the 19th edition of CASP. As part of the 19th edition of CASP, they launched the Nutritious Foods Financing Facility-N3F, budgeted at 726.8 million meticals (11.5 million dollars) for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in the production of nutritious foods.
‘The reason we have created this opportunity is because of the challenges that many SMEs have faced in identifying opportunities for their development. We know that around 80 per cent of what we consume in our homes is produced by SMEs,’ explained Rafael Nzucule, GAIN’s External Engagement Manager, adding: “so, in 2018, GAIN and its partners at a global level decided to create a new initiative aimed at creating a fund that allows companies in the food production sector to have access to some support, whether technical or financial.”
The source clarified that Inconfin Investment Management – an independent impact investment manager centred on emerging markets with a focus on financial inclusion – is GAIN’s partner in implementing the fund, which has three specific components. ‘Firstly, there’s the financing component for SMEs focused on the production of safe and nutritious food in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Companies can request support from 18.9 million meticals (300,000 dollars) up to 63.2 million meticals (one million dollars), and in this initial phase the fund has a value of 11.5 million dollars. The prospect is to raise more support from donors until it reaches 3.1 billion meticals (50 million dollars). In the meantime, we’re not going to wait until we have this amount to start activities,’ he explained.
Rafael Nzucule explained that the second component of the fund has to do with providing pre- and post-investment technical assistance to companies under the leadership of GAIN. And finally, there is also the monitoring, evaluation and learning component, the aim of which is to help document the successes of the fund’s implementation so that it can continue to attract new partners to the initiative.
What are the criteria for accessing the fund? He explains that ‘the company must have at least one million dollars in annual turnover over the last three years; it must be an SME that is commercially sustainable, i.e. with positive income over the last three years of activity; and it must belong to sub-Saharan African countries’.
For his part, the president of the CTA, Agostinho Vuma, explained that this fund has ‘a mixed financing approach centred on improving nutrition, supporting our SMEs to increase the production and sale of nutritious, locally produced food destined for national markets. To access the fund, a link will be made available for submitting projects’.
‘With this initiative, our Confederation of Economic Associations and our partner GAIN Mozambique are strengthening their partnership in search of solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises on our home soil. In addition, our registered trademark (Annual Conference of the Private Sector – CASP) demonstrates that it is a very important stage for business initiatives by our national private sector,’ he emphasised.
The current edition of CASP, organised by the Confederation of Economic Associations (CTA) in partnership with the government, aims to reflect ‘on the progress and challenges of the Package of Economic Acceleration Measures and to debate the conditions of the business environment in order to make the country more competitive’. Projects valued at 75.8 billion meticals (1.7 billion dollars) will also be discussed.
Taking place under the theme ‘Investments and Business in the Environment of Economic Acceleration Measures: Challenges and Opportunities’, the three-day event (15, 16 and 17 May) will include 80 foreign businesspeople, more than 4,000 face-to-face participants and 20,000 virtual participants.
