Call for Proposals: Modern Cooking Facility Africa Second Funding Round
The Modern Cooking Facility for Africa (MCFA) has opened its second funding round to support access to and scale-up of high-technology clean cooking solutions in seven Sub-Saharan African countries.
The Call for Proposals invites interested private companies selling modern and clean cooking solutions to compete for funding. MCFA offers a combination of results-based financing, non-reimbursable catalytic grant financing and technical assistance to companies active in the clean cooking market to support them to further expand and scale up their businesses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The new MCFA funding round will be divided into two funding windows combining results-based financing and catalytic grant financing. The total available funding for both windows will be up to EUR 16 million and the individual ticket sizes will vary from EUR 500,000 to 2.5 million.
Applicants can be experienced providers of clean cooking services for residential, commercial or institutional use, utilities, mini-grid operators, or companies deploying standalone solar systems that could support e-cooking services in conjunction with their main operations.
The Catalytic Funding Window will be targeted at earlier stage companies with scaling potential. Of the requested MCFA financing within this window, 50% will be provided in the form of non-reimbursable catalytic grants and available to companies in the DRC, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Scale-up Funding Window will be open to more mature companies in all project countries under terms similar to those of the first MCFA funding round, but with Malawi introduced as a new target country. This window will provide up to 30% of available funding in the form of non-reimbursable catalytic grants and the rest as results-based financing.
The new funding round will continue to support only higher-tier cooking solutions, including electric cookstoves and cookstoves that use sustainably produced solid and liquid biofuels or biogas solutions.
The application process:
The application process is divided into two stages: a Pre-Qualification stage and a Final Application stage.
During the Pre-Qualification stage, Applicants are asked to provide limited information related to certain eligibility criteria as well as plans on how the funding will be used. Applicants passing the Pre-Qualification stage will be invited to the Final Application stage and asked to submit full business plans, which will be evaluated and scored by an external evaluation committee appointed by Nefco, the Facility Manager.
Companies contracted or currently undergoing contracting under the first funding round (MCFA1) are not eligible to receive funding under the new funding round (MCFA2) for the same Project Country. In other words, a previously successful Applicant can only receive funding in another MCFA Project Country under this new Call for Proposals.
The funding round is open for applications through the online application system. The application forms (in the system) will be available at 16:00 Helsinki time (EET) on November 29, 2023. The deadline for submitting applications is January 31, 2024 at 12:00 (noon) Helsinki time (EET).
Applicants are requested to send any questions regarding the call and application process through the online application system at the latest by 12 January 2024 at 12:00 (noon) Helsinki time (EET). Questions and answers will be made available to all registered Applicants in an anonymised and redacted form via the online application system by 19 January 2024.
Applicants will be notified of the Pre-Qualification stage outcome via the online application system in February 2024.
To learn more and apply, click here.
