Over the last decade or so, many African economies have grown but the pattern of growth has been unequal. This is particularly true for people who make their living from agriculture, either directly or indirectly. They make up 2/3 of Africa’s workforce, and largely live in poor rural areas. There are many challenges that prevent financial services providers and agribusinesses from offering products and services to the rural poor. The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity was a $50 million, seven-year commitment by the Mastercard Foundation to extend financial services to people living in rural sub-Sahara Africa, with a focus on smallholder farmers.

This challenge fund accepted applications for innovative financial solutions that expanded and deepened financial inclusion for poor people in rural areas of Africa. The Fund also financed select solutions that were implemented successfully and were ready for scaling to new markets, a new geographic area, or for a new use. The 2017/2018 competitions were open to receive applications for financial support. Unlike previous 2015 and 2016 competitions, this competition followed a ‘rolling’ format, open throughout the year with applications submitted and evaluated periodically.

Since it was launched in 2015, the Fund held four competitions. A total of 21 projects across Sub-Saharan Africa received financial support. 

From the onset, the Fund was set-up to run three rounds of each competition in order to provide support to the best innovation and the best scaling proposals. However, for the third round of competition, the ‘call for proposal’ was modified to a ‘rolling’ format so that applications could be submitted and evaluated periodically throughout the year. In this new mode of application, even unsuccessful applicants were able to refine and resubmit their applications subsequently, along with new entrants in the competition.

KPMG's IDAS practice in consortium with Triple Line, has so far provided the full range of fund management services to the Fund for Rural Prosperity including design, competition management, grantee contracting, financial and programme management oversight, monitoring and evaluation. Working with KPMG, the foundation’s programme aims to reach 1 million financially excluded people in rural and agricultural areas in sub-Saharan Africa.