Deadline: 2 October 2019
This project funded by the European Union is implanted by Expertise France with a close cooperation of the Ministry of Planning. The Ministry of Planning is strongly involved in empowering the Civil Society Organizations to disseminate the entrepreneurship culture within their local communities in Libya.
Expertise France is the French public international cooperation agency. It designs and implements projects which aim to contribute to the balanced development of partner countries, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda and the priorities of France’s external action.
Expertise France’s mission is to meet the demand of partner countries seeking to enhance the quality of their public policies in order to address the environmental, social, economic and security challenges they are facing. The agency achieves this goal by implementing projects in those main fields.
EU4PSL Project
The EU4PSL is an EU funded project, started as of Feb 2019, with an aim of improving Libya’s business environment in order to generate economic growth for private sector and job opportunities for youth and in particular for women. This project seeks to assist the government of Libya and all relevant stakeholders in their efforts to promote the development of an open, dynamic and diversified economy in Libya.
The project will contribute concrete and practical assistance to key Libyan stakeholders, who have capacity to accelerate the transition towards:
- Economic diversification;
- Improved competitiveness of Libyan private sector and;
- Increased role of young and female entrepreneurs in national wealth-creation.
The purpose of the present call for proposal is to identify Libyan CSO’s with thematic specialisation and capacity to support women and youth’s economic empowerment.
Objectives
The specific objectives (components) of the programme are:
- Strengthen the capacities of Libyan institutions to design and implement actions conducive to MSME development and improve the attractiveness of Libyan economy for investments.
- This first component addresses the needed improvements, in terms of mandate, capacity and competence, of the fundamental institutional players in Libya in terms of the country’s economic strategy: MoE and MoF. An intensive set of activities will be implemented to help move the country out of its centralised rent-based economy and help increasing the role of the private sector. To achieve this, however, the MoE and MoF will be heavily involved as they have a considerable political influence.
- The MoE and MoF roles in Libya are extremely broad, their mandate is complex, but their overall political influence is considerable. Consequently, the project focuses on three essential elements which constitute core competences of the MoE and MoF, chosen in relation to their potential and capacity to influence and drive change.
- Support youth’s and women’s economic empowerment and start-up entrepreneurship.
- The second component spans the entire “entrepreneurship chain”, from pre-entrepreneurship (increasing capacity of support services) all the way to “getting into active business” (facilitating access to funding for entrepreneurs). There exist several entrepreneurs of highly variable levels of advancement, competence and ambition throughout Libya. This component is designed to be able to simultaneously provide its assistance and expertise on an as-needed basis, rather than on a chronological or staggered basis.
- Improve access to finance for MSMEs and start-ups, including with innovative financial tools and microfinance.
- The access to finance component aims at facilitating the access to financial services to Libyan entrepreneurs either by improving the services of the existing financial institutions and/or by supporting the establishment of new bodies. The project will continue supporting the reactivation of the Libyan Credit Guarantee fund which was previously carried by SLEIDSE project along with developing new financial tools that had not previously existed within the Libyan market. In order to achieve the optimum results, the CBL, commercial banks, sovereign funds, etc. will be directly involved.
- The overall objective of the action is to improve Libya’s business environment, in order to generate economic growth for private sector and job opportunities for youth and in particular for women.
Building The Capacity Of The Local Civil Society(Component 2)
- The aim of the component 2 is to organise and make operational a broad network of entrepreneurship-supporting organisations all over the country. This is expected to create a powerful network of actors and instruments that can be operational quickly.
- Expertise France and the Ministry of Planning aim is to build and/or enhance capacities and visibility of CSOs dealing with youth and women empowerment.
The component 2 of this project is divide in 2 outputs:
- “Empowering women by mentoring”
-
- Expertise France will organise a training to enhance the selected CSOs capacities.
- The training will divide in 10 thematic workshops:
- Management and Human Ressources workshop
- Program development workshop
- Communication and Marketing workshop
- Partnerships and Fundraising workshop
- Reporting workshop
- Business modelling workshop
- Access to finance workshop
- Mentoring and coaching workshop
- Study tour
- Pitching skills workshop
- Afterward those CSOs will be in charge, for 5 months, to train and help concretely 2 females’ entrepreneurs to develop their business.
- The mission will be, among others, to help women entrepreneurs to:
- formalize their business plan
- carry out the registration process
- teach them how to pitch their idea in front of potential investors
- develop their marketing and communication strategies
- formalize their accounting system
-
- “Nation-wide Business contests”
-
- In cooperation with Libyan universities, each CSO will implement and organize an entrepreneurship bootcamp (6 days of intensive training), to train 24 university students on business plans writing.
- Then based on their business plan, entrepreneurs with best ideas will be trained on pitching skills to patriciate in a nation-wide business contest.
-
- Note: Both output 1 and output 2 will be annual activities for the next 3 years.
Funding Information and Duration
- The maximum amount to implement the activities will be € 60, 000 (split in 3, €20,000 for the first year and € 20 000 every year for 2 years) this budget should cover:
-
- Mentoring and coaching 2 females’ entrepreneurs to create and develop their business for 5 months;
- Organizing a 6 days Bootcamp (6 days of intensive training) in Libya for 20-22 young potential entrepreneurs;
- Leading and organizing 6 workshops (1 every 2 months) the spread the entrepreneurship culture within the local community.
-
- 5.2 Support to third parties – female entrepreneurs (through the CSOs)
- 12 different women entrepreneurs who were able to initially start their business, will receive each year (over 3 years) € 5 000.
- The duration of the action may not be less than 3 years.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to be eligible for a grant, the applicant must:
- Be a Non-Governmental Organization
- Be a non-profit making entity
- Be registered in Libya
- Be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the proposal of the action, not acting as an intermediary
- Demonstrate the ability to manage activities related to the purpose of the project
Note:
- A previous experience with international donors is an asset.
- A previous experience in supporting young and/or female entrepreneurs throughout the country is an asset.
How to Apply
Applicants can apply via given website.
Eligible Country : Libya
For more information, please visit https://www.expertisefrance.fr/offer-detail?id=753885