Deadline: 31-Oct-20
The Prospero Zambia has launched a call for proposals for Innovation Partnerships in Tourism & Hospitality.
Prospero Zambia works with intervention partners in the tourism, artisanal products and conservation sectors to address market constraints that hamper sector growth, competitiveness and opportunities for SMEs.
These constraints include:
- Capital: Access to investment and working capital finance constrains the growth potential of SMEs – or would-be entrepreneurs. Innovative solutions around capital accessibility and provision for SMEs would have an inordinate impact on job creation and growth.
- Capacity: Management capacity both directly within these sectors – or within the business services sectors that should offer value-adding support to these sectors – is an ever-present issue that requires innovative approaches to enable more efficient functioning and greater SME accessibility within these markets.
- Connections: Poor physical or virtual connections to end-markets, consumers/clients or products, exorbitant logistics and shipping costs (particularly in the artisanal products sector) and overall cost of doing business limit opportunities for SMEs to grow. Lack of collaboration between potentially complementary businesses further restricts likely growth.
- Compliance: Changing, unclear or overly burdensome regulations, limited information about existing industry requirements, and limited availability of quality inputs or packaging (in the artisanal products sector) make it difficult for SMEs to competitively abide by formal and informal rules of their respective markets or customer preferences.
Funding Information
- Technical Assistance only: £5,000 to £50,000
- Business Innovation (this can include some technical assistance): £5,000 to £100,000
Eligibility Criteria
Registered and tax-compliant for-profit organizations are eligible to apply. Individuals are not eligible.
All applicants must meet three basic conditions:
- Zambian registered legal entity: All applicants must be registered with the appropriate authority as a legal entity in Zambia.
- Tax registered and compliant: All applicants must be able to demonstrate that they are registered for tax and are in compliance with tax obligations.
- Authorised business activity: All applicants must possess any relevant sector licenses or permits for their proposed business project.
- Post-revenue: All applicants must be post-revenue and have a minimum trading history of 2 years.
Criteria
Prospero provides financial and/or technical assistance support to private sector companies or associations or commercially-minded non-profit organisations to co-invest in innovative and scalable solutions that:
- address key sector constraints and have strong commercial foundations.
- could help build companies’ ability to (eventually) attract commercial impact investment.
- create and/or sustain quality jobs and income opportunities for low-income Zambians and/or marginalized populations (women, youth, people with disabilities and rural populations).
- improve climate resilience for marginalised groups.
For more information, visit https://prospero.co.zm/call-for-concepts/call-tourism-hospitality/