Deadline: 27-Jan-21
UK Government has launched The African agriculture strand of the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme for UK registered higher or further education institutions, RTOs or Catapults that can apply for a share of up to £2 million to help fund an innovation project with another knowledge base and a business partner registered in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya or South Africa.
The business partner and African knowledge base partner must both be based in the same one of the following countries: Republic of Ghana, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Republic of Kenya or Republic of South Africa.
The UK knowledge base, African knowledge base and the business partner must sign the KTP joint commitment statement. You must deliver an exploitation plan during your project. Your initial exploitation plan is part of your application.
The African agriculture strand of the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme supports a partnership between:
- A UK registered higher education or further education institution, research and technology organization (RTO) or Catapult (which we will refer to as the ‘UK knowledge base partner’)
- An African business or not-for-profit organization (which we will refer to collectively as the ‘business partner’)
- A knowledge base in Africa (which we will refer to as the ‘African knowledge base partner’)
Scope
Your project must align with the scope of the ‘Agri-tech catalyst round 9: agriculture and food systems innovation, late stage’ competition.
Your application must be for a specific, strategic innovation project that tackles one or more challenges faced by the business partner. It can be any kind of project but it must show:
- That it helps the business with a real need;
- How it fits the strategic aims of the business partner;
- There is a genuine market opportunity and route to market;
- How the knowledge gained will be embedded within the business partner;
- The commercial impact for the business partner, and any wider impacts;
- That you have a clear understanding of what qualifications, skills, attributes and experience the associate will need.
Funding Information
- They will consider partially funding project costs of any amount if we judge the costs to be appropriate. Typically projects cost no more than £125,000 per year.
Eligibility Criteria
- This award is provided on a non-aid basis. This means the knowledge base partner must publish or make openly available, on a non-selective basis, all project outputs. If the business partner decides to commercially exploit the project outputs, it can only do so with no selective advantage.
- Innovate UK is unable to award grant funding to organizations meeting the condition known as undertakings in difficulty (UiD).
- African business partner
- Business partners can work with knowledge bases of their choice, one from the UK and one from their own country. They encourage business partners to approach knowledge bases directly. To collaborate with the knowledge bases, the business partner must:
- be a business, of any size, or a not-for-profit organization registered in Republic of Ghana, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Republic of Kenya or Republic of South Africa;
- have more than 2 employees;
- demonstrate its ability to support the project;
- be invited by the UK knowledge base and complete its parts of the application;
- provide business finance information for the past 3 years.
- Business partners can work with knowledge bases of their choice, one from the UK and one from their own country. They encourage business partners to approach knowledge bases directly. To collaborate with the knowledge bases, the business partner must:
- UK knowledge base partner
- Each application must be created by a UK knowledge base, with the help of a knowledge transfer adviser. The UK knowledge base must lead the project and must:
- be a UK registered higher education (HE) or further education (FE) institution, RTO or Catapult;
- invite one business or not-for-profit organisation from Republic of Ghana, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Republic of Kenya or Republic of South Africa to join the application and collaborate with them on the development of the project;
- invite one African knowledge base from the same African country to join the application and collaborate with them on the development of the project;
- invite one knowledge transfer adviser to join the application;
- not act in any way to gain selective commercial or economic advantage from the outputs of the project;
- allow associates to carry out the majority of the project at the business partner’s premises;
- make sure the application is completed and submitted before the competition closes.
- Each application must be created by a UK knowledge base, with the help of a knowledge transfer adviser. The UK knowledge base must lead the project and must:
- The knowledge base partner cannot work alone.
For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/774/overview