Request for Proposals: African Initiatives for Digital and Green Innovations

With a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation, Enabel has initiated the Digital and Green Innovation Joint Action, which aims to operationalize the advancement of the twin transition to a green and digital economy.

It will support circular and robust local economies while fostering digital solutions that address environmental issues like biodiversity loss and climate change.

The European Union, Germany, Belgium, Estonia, and France are the funders of this joint action, which is carried out by these member states through the assistance of their development agencies (i.e. GIZ, Enabel, ESTDEV, AFD & Expertise France).

Enabel is implementing this call for proposals as part of the Digital and Green Innovation Joint Action through its Innovation Hub, Wehubit.

The DGI Action will have a global scope, covering Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific.

General and Specific Objectives

• The main goal of this call for proposals is to support inclusive and sustainable development in the partner nations of the Belgian development cooperation by promoting the use of and access to digital solutions as a means of addressing environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.
• The Call for Proposals’ specific goal is to find and assist in the scaling up of Digital and Green Innovations (DGI) that are pertinent to the European Union’s and Enabel’s country portfolio objectives in the corresponding African partner countries of the Belgian development cooperation.
• The purpose of this call for proposals is to find and assist digital and green innovations that are either ready to scale or in the process of scaling up.

Thematic Priorities

The following are Enabel’s and its partners’ thematic priorities:

• Climate-smart farming and environmentally friendly food systems
• Urban planning that is sustainable and resilient
• Water management and preventing floods
• Ecological economy and electronic waste handling
• Clean, inexpensive, and sustainable energy

Funding Information

• The total indicative sum available for Enabel’s Call for Proposals is 750.000 EUR. The contracting authority reserves the right to not award all of the available funds.
• Grants value
  • Any grant application under this Call for Proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:
    • Minimum amount: 100.000,00 EUR
    • Maximum amount: 150.000,00 EUR
• Duration: The term of the action may not be less than 12 months, or exceed 14 months.

Outputs

• Output 1 (Africa): Entrepreneurship support for digital and green innovation in the acceleration phase in Africa.
• Output 2 (Africa): (Pre)-Incubation and pre-acceleration support in Africa
• Output 3 (Latin America and the Caribbean): Capacity-building on earth observation in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Output 4 (Asia Pacific): Entrepreneurship support for digital and green innovation in the acceleration phase in Asia Pacific
• Output 5: Policy dialogues and partnerships
• Output 6: Finance brokerage

General Target and Modalities

• The Call focuses on providing grants and capacity building/learning opportunities to public institutions (national and/or regional), academia, CSOs, NGOs and other ‘not-forprofit’ actors (such as social enterprises or not-for-profit business associations).
• This Call for proposals organises the competitive selection process, which will proceed in 2 rounds. After the second round only 4 or 5 of the received applications will be awarded with a grant to support the sustainable scaling of their proposed Digital and Green Innovations.

Geographic Scope

• DGIs should be implemented in one or more partner country of the Belgian Development Cooperation in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DRC, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, Mozambique, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Uganda, Senegal and Tanzania.
• This Call for Proposals appreciates DGIs that have multi-country/regional scope.
• For the sake of coherence and longer-term sustainability of the supported DSIs, the Call for proposals will target and prioritise countries that are common to other EU partners implementing activities in Africa: Uganda and Rwanda.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicant
  • To be eligible for grants, the applicant must satisfy the following conditions:
    • be a legal person; and
    • be a public actor or be a private non-profit actor; and
    • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the coapplicant(s) and not be acting as an intermediary; and
    • have already managed a grant (of public funds) amounting to 40% of the amount applied for. A certificate of satisfactory performance signed by the donor is mandatory and constitutes proof thereof; and
    • have at one’s disposal financial statements certified by an independent body (audit or statutory commissioner). Those statements must not be older than 2 years.
• Co-applicant(s)
  • The co-applicant(s) shall participate in the implementation of the action, and the costs that they incur shall be eligible in the same way as those incurred by the applicant.
  • The co-applicant(s) must satisfy the eligibility criteria which apply to the applicant itself, except that:
    • they do not need to prove that they have already managed a grant amounting to 40% of the amount applied for;
  • The co-applicant(s) must sign the ‘Mandate statement’.

For more information, visit Enabel.

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