CASA partner wins funding grant

We are pleased to announce that one of CASAs implementing partners, Amazon Poultry, have won a grant from the Malawi Innovation and Challenge Fund for their project titled ‘Improving Poultry Supply Chains through Smallholder Aggregation Services’. Recently contracted as part of our poultry initiative, Amazon Poultry have been supported by CASA to apply for and win a grant under the Economic Resilience and Recovery Window Programme.

The Fund is supported by the United Nations Development Programme, UK Aid, IFAD through the PRIDE Programme, Federal Republic of Germany through KFW, and the Royal Norwegian Embassy. It provides grants to innovative business projects in Malawi with the aim of absorbing some of the commercial risk to produce innovation, speeding up implementation of new business models and/ or technologies that have high social impacts. In a country where 85% of the population is rural and many rely on agriculture, the Fund saw it was important to support a project like this, in an area which has struggled during COVID-19.

The grant, for US$295,000, will support the work that Amazon Poultry aims to do to expand their business by improving their supply chain and incorporating aggregation services into their business model. Currently they produce poultry feed, day old broiler and layer chicks, medicine and accessories and sell this from several outlets across Malawi.

This grant, along with US$280,000 of its own money, will allow Amazon Poultry to contract smallholder farmers directly who can supply raw materials (soya and maize) to them and also engage farmers in poultry production. This new model will allow Amazon Poultry to become input suppliers to farmers (selling broiler chicks and feed) and also act as a buyer of raw materials and grown broiler chickens.

To get the grant, Amazon Poultry had to go through two competitive stages, followed by a period of consultation and were supported by CASAs in-country team with budgeting, due diligence, logic models, reach and milestone setting. They had to show how they would:

• Support technology-based solutions for tracking movements of goods, supporting aggregation, traceability, and delivery.
• Support businesses that can work with smallholder producers and suppliers to scale and grow products that are likely to experience supply shortages but have potential for future exports.

They also had to demonstrate their ability to deliver significant benefits to poor households in terms of improved incomes or job creation/ retention or by providing affordable products and services, rather than solely benefitting them or the project.

The project will start in January 2021 and go on until January 2023.