There is more than ample evidence that female entrepreneurs face unique challenges in starting and growing businesses, particularly in emerging markets.

Hence, in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Agency (USAID), ANDE is pleased to announce another round of AWEF grant 2021.

About the AWEF award

ANDE, a global network of organizations that accelerate entrepreneurship, launched the Gender Equality Initiative in 2019 to support and empower women entrepreneurs in developing markets.

One of the activities under the Gender Equality Initiative is the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF) which is designed to identify the best plan to get investment capital into the hands of women entrepreneurs.

Through the AWEF, ANDE calls for the submission of concept notes to identify, experiment with, or expand scalable solutions that address the financing gap for women-led SGBs in eastern, western, and southern Africa, generating knowledge and proven solutions that can be adopted and scaled by the broader SGB sector.

For the second round of AWEF, ANDE in partnership with USAID is set to direct more investment into the hands of women-led businesses in eastern, western, and southern Africa.

As such, the initiative will award at least three projects with total budgets between USD $50,000-$150,000 from a total funding pool of USD $450K.

Areas of intervention

ANDE welcomes submissions that employ innovative solutions to both supply and demand components of the gender financing gap and that fit any of the categories below:

Gender transformative approaches to delivering acceleration services including recruitment, selection, cohort, and program design, or other elements seen as constraints to the success of women entrepreneurs.

Additional services offered independently or in collaboration with traditional accelerator programs, including tailored consulting services, bespoke matchmaking, investment facilitation, mentorship, or other approaches to address gender issues in traditional acceleration.

New and unique methods of catalyzing investment into the hands of women fund managers to address the systemic finance constraints that women entrepreneurs encounter.

Innovative approaches for sensitizing and influencing SGB support providers around the fundamental challenges (family life, social norms, talent opportunities) that women entrepreneurs face.

Eligibility criteria

The AWEF award is open to non-profit entrepreneur support organizations, such as accelerators, capacity development providers, incubators, investors, non-governmental organizations, operating (non-grantmaking) foundations, and research and advisory service providers

SGB service providers with proposed projects must be residents of these eligible countries:

(a) Western Africa- Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo.
(b) Eastern Africa- Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda
(c) Southern Africa- Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe

Evaluation criteria

Proposed solutions must meet the following criteria to qualify for selection:

Objectives and justifications of solutions must be well articulated and have clarity of purpose

Organizations must be able to outline the feasibility of their proposal as well as demonstrate their own ability to achieve it

The proposed model must have an impact, addressing a barrier to the financing gap for women-led SGBs in eastern Africa, western Africa, or southern Africa

Value of Award

Submissions should be for projects, minimum of one per region, lasting for up to 12 months with a total request of between $50,000- $150,000.

Method of application

Interested applicants must submit a concept note here.

Selected applicants will be asked to submit a full application. Note that it is important to read carefully all the requirements before applying. Click here for more information.

Applicants may send questions to [email protected]

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