The West Africa Trade and Investment Hub Activity (herein referred to as “the Trade Hub”) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is accepting Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from eligible applicants to fund a program entitled Covid-19 Rapid Response from Financial Institutions & Advisors.

The purpose of the Trade Hub activity is to promote investments, expand regional and international trade, and create employment in West Africa. This APS focuses on advancing this purpose within the context of Covid-19.

The USAID-funded Trade Hub is a five-year trade and investment activity that aims to catalyze private sector investments in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in West Africa, thereby increasing SME sales, boosting exports, and creating jobs, particularly for women—all of which are in line with USAID’s Journey To Self-Reliance (J2SR). To increase private sector investments, the Trade Hub will co-invest $96 million in grants, of which approximately US$14.4 million will be for co-investments with Financial Institutions and Advisors (FI&A) that are engaged in building operational and cash flow resilience among SMEs affected by the SARSCoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic.

The Trade Hub, as its co-investment, intends to award grants valued between US$250,000 and US$2 million to FI&As that can mobilize further private capital aimed at building the operational and cash flow resilience of SMEs in West Africa within the context of Covid-19. This is expected to result in:

• Job preservation and ultimately job creation
• Recovery of sales to pre-pandemic levels and, ultimately, faster sales growth and exports
• Preservation and ultimately growth of SMEs in the mission-critical sectors of food and nutrition security, logistics, and global value chains
• Business resilience in the form of sales diversification and growth, margin expansion, faster cash conversion cycle, and prudent discretionary capital spending due to long-term technical governance provided by FI&As
• Loss reversal and profit growth, and, ultimately, positive free cash flow generation and therefore cash build up for liquidity against future risks and repayment of debt obligations

Objectives

The Trade Hub’s primary objectives for its Covid-19 response from F&IAS are as follow:

• Objective 1: Ensuring Access to Finance During the Covid-19 Crisis
• Objective 2: Retaining Employment During the Covid-19 Crisis
• Objective 3: Leveraging the Private Sector in the Response to Covid-19

Funding Information

• Subject to the availability of funds, the total estimated amount of funding available is USD14, 400,000. The total value of each award is estimated to range from USD250, 000 to USD2,000,000.

Geographies

The Trade Hub operates in 18 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauretania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Within Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria, preference is for SMEs with operations in Zones of Influence (ZOI).

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for award under this opportunity, an applicant must demonstrate that it falls into one of the grantee categories below:

• Private Sector Companies – both local and international firms.
• Foreign Organizations (referred to as non-U.S. NGOs): either nonprofit or for-profit organizations that meet the definition in 2 CFR 200.47.
• Non-profit Organizations: Organizations that meet the definition of 2 CFR 200.70.
• For-Profit Organizations
• Government entities are not eligible to apply.

For more information, visit USAID.