With support from the UK Government under mNutrition Initiative, the GSMA mAgri Challenge Fund launched in February 2014, aiming to reach 2 million users with life-changing mobile agriculture services. 

In the first round of the challenge fund we received 27 concept notes from 14 countries; 13 applicants were invited to develop their full business plans for the fund panel.  After a competitive process, the following applicants were chosen:

• Airtel Malawi
• Dialog Sri Lanka
• Grameenphone Bangladesh
• Vodafone Ghana
• Ooredoo Myanmar
• Telenor Pakistan

PROJECTS & SERVICES GSMA SEEKS TO SUPPORT

Information & Advisory Services

• The primary focus of the Fund is on information and advisory services for farmers that can improve farm productivity, income as well as the nutritional status of the household (Agri VAS).
• Mobile agriculture information services could include (but are not limited to): weather and climate advice, market information, agronomy advice for livestock, crops and fisheries, advice on post-harvest and processing practices, guidance on certification and standards of agricultural production, information and advice on inputs, pests and disease management.
• All information services must include a nutrition sensitive agriculture component.
• In addition information services might include advice and training on financial literacy, which is highly recommended in cases where information services are a supporting component for an agriculture-tailored mobile financial service (Agri MFS).

Mobile Financial Services

• The Fund seeks to support innovative mobile financial solutions for smallholders that can increase the efficiency of agriculture-related transactions, increase farmers’ access to saving opportunities as well as increasing access to derivative financial products such as insurance, credit and farm equipment lease.
• The Fund encourages applications for Agri MFS as long as they are bundled with information and advisory services, as described above.

Mobile Transaction Services

• The Fund seeks to support innovative mobile solutions to improve the efficiency of agricultural value chains as long as they are complimented with information and advisory services for smallholders.

WHAT IS AVAILABLE THROUGH THE FUND?

Financial support

• Grants of GBP 250,000 (100% matched by grantee, in cash or in kind)
• Funds to employ a full-time user experience expert to join the implementation team for the length of the project (This additional earmarked funding does not have to be matched by the grantee).

Non-financial support
To ensure that projects are low-risk and deliver value to the end user, GSMA work with grantees to develop a support plan which may include:

• targeted consultancy (business, technical and agriculture expertise)
• supporting tools and resources
• tailored in-country market and customer insights research as well as support on user-centric service design
• relevant content for a set of selected commodities identified in collaboration with the business owner, including factsheets available for the further customisation by the consortium
• knowledge sharing opportunities with practitioners in mobile agriculture sector
• partnership brokering
• analytics and business intelligence
• monitoring and evaluation framework and tools