Several companies have benefited in terms of financial support from the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity. To review them and be inspired, click the relevant links below.
The 2017/2018 Competition sought to support innovative financial products, services or processes from organizations that will design, pilot and test new ideas, as well as those that aim to expand proven ideas into new geographies or a new customer segment in rural and agricultural areas. This competition took on a rolling format with intermediate closing points for assessment of applications in batches. The second submission period closed on 5th October 2017.
The 2017/2018 Competition was open to project proposals which would be implemented in one of the 24 African countries of focus that the Fund prioritizes. The ‘rolling’ competition format presented an opportunity for high potential applications which were unsuccessful in one round to have time to strengthen their applications and re-enter them before the next closing date. The first submission period closed for evaluation on 10 August 2017.
The Innovation Competition Round 2, like its predecessor, was open to applications from organizations aiming to design, pilot, test, and launch new financial products and services that could effectively meet the financing needs of people living in poverty in rural and agricultural areas.
This was an independent competition that focused on scalable ideas. Its aim was to provide support for expansion of proven ideas for financial product, service or process into new geographies or new customer segments in the rural areas. The Scaling Competition provided support to projects in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
This Competition was open to receiving applications from organizations aiming to design, pilot, test, and launch new financial products and services that could effectively meet the financing needs of people living in poverty in rural and agricultural areas. There were various considerations for the innovative ideas including the potential for the proposed idea to change access to financial services for smallholder farmers in Africa and to what extent the proposed project intended to reach financially underserved markets.
