TradeMark East Africa Challenge Fund (TRAC) is a $7m fund designed to challenge businesses, private sector organisations and civil society organisations from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda to develop innovative ideas aimed at promoting cross-border trade in East Africa.
TRAC is based in Nairobi and has representatives in Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It is open to proposals from all EAC nations.
Focus Areas
- business innovation that increases trade
- innovation in services that enables cross-border trade
- innovative ways of gathering evidence and mo-bilising public opinion
Objectives
TRAC is looking for projects that will:
- develop new, unproven models for researching and communicating the benefits of regional integration, with the potential to be sustainable and replicable are innovative (meaning they involve new products, services, marketing ap-proaches, business models, etc)
- deliver sizeable benefits to a significant number of the poor in the EAC
- have the potential for impact beyond the project, through replication or chang-ing the way the research, advocacy and communication occurs related to re-gional integration
- identify how the evidence-based research transport and logistics will influence policy formulation
- open the space for policy dialogue
- build capacity of policy makers to address key issues
- broaden public understanding of the roles of PSOs and CSOs to fully engage in debates about reform in EAC
- demonstrate appropriateness and matching with expected results
Sectors
- Agriculture
- Climate change
- Environment
- Girls and women
- Livelihoods
- Private sector/business
- Trade
Focus Countries: Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda
Eligibility Criteria
- Innovative projects, proposed by private firms that have the potential to boost cross-border and international trade will be eligible for funding.
- Projects that also benefit a large number of people and promote climate resilience and environment sustainability will be given preference.
- Women owned or managed businesses are particularly encouraged to apply.
How to Apply
Applicants can apply for the fund via TRAC website.
For more information, please visit TRAC.