Three companies from Burundi, Malawi, and Uganda will be receiving a total of $2,808,295 from the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP). The backing is to support projects that expand financial inclusion in rural Africa. These companies were elected from 195 businesses applied for the third phase of the Fund’s 2017/2018 rolling competition.
This brings the Mastercard Foundation total fund portfolio to 33 projects across 14 African countries – Burkina Faso, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
Earlier this year, the Fund awarded US$9 million to nine projects in the first and second phases of the competition.
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Mastercard claims that the fund is one of its largest in its tries to aid and back both innovative, scalable financial products and services that improve the lives of people living in remote settlements in Africa.
This latest round will extend to agronomy, finance, and insurance solutions to excluded rural populations in the three countries. Selected companies are – Prothem Usine S.A., Pula Advisors GmbH Limited, and Enviu BV Limited.
“It is quite interesting to see how companies are leveraging technology, such as drones, to provide last-mile financial services to smallholder farmers across Africa and we are glad to see their innovations come to fruition,” says Wambui Chege, team leader of the Fund for Rural Prosperity.
The fourth and final phase of the competition will be announced in early 2019.
