Deadline: 30-Sep-20
The Rainforest Alliance’s Africa Cocoa Fund (ACF) is a three-year, $5 million fund to support cocoa farmers and help preserve the local landscapes in West and Central Africa.
It aims to create measurable, long-lasting positive impact by building the capacity of those certified cocoa farmers who most need assistance to implement our certification standards for sustainable agriculture. The ACF will also support select sustainability projects for cocoa farmers and their landscapes beyond their certification requirements, to achieve further positive impact.
Funding Information
- During this first call for applications they will distribute $500,000 out of the total $5 million fund.
Interventions
Eligible interventions fall into two categories of primary and secondary focus:
Category A – Primary Focus
- Addressing child labor: implementing Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System, Assess-and- Address system, remediation actions, and gender and youth inclusion
- Geodata – location points and polygon collection: collecting location points and polygons to enable compliance with the High Conservation Value areas, forest protection, and protected area criteria of our standards
- Digitization of Internal Management System (IMS) and traceability system: creating and maintaining records in digital format to increase trustworthiness and reliability of records, developing capacity for data analysis to enhance performance of the group, enabling groups to overcome quality and business challenges by making decisions backed by data and with cross-functional visibility
- Agroforestry and shade implementation: estimating and implementing materials to meet the shade requirements, farm rejuvenation and forests restoration activities
Category B – Secondary Focus
- Income diversification
- Skill development: coaching and negotiations, local advocacy, IMS and personal development
- Landscape level issues: linking certification to landscape and communities, including contribution of tree ownership to increased use of shade trees
- Data-driven innovative solutions and scale up of integrated pest management, soil health and other climate-smart strategies
- Living income: proof of concept about paying living income to farmers
Terms and Conditions
- During this first call for applications we’ll distribute US$500,000 out of the total US$5 million fund. There will be additional calls for applications in 2021 and 2022. A producer group or cooperative can receive maximum two ACF grants during the lifetime of the fund (but not more than one grant per one call for applications). They expect a maximum of 10 awards this round.
- The interventions of the ACF will mostly be technical assistance. A producer group or cooperative applying for support will select an eligible intervention and provide further details on proposed activities and expected impact in the application.
- A producer group or cooperative can include several combinations of eligible interventions.
- A producer group or cooperative can, under specific conditions, apply for in-kind grants such as the provision of technology or equipment. For more information about these specific conditions, please contact us directly. Each request will be reviewed case by case during the application process.
- One producer group or cooperative can receive a grant of US$30,000-150,000 for all its interventions combined. This amount includes the payment for the services of implementing partners and consultants.
- Interventions must be implemented between 6 months to 2 years as necessary.
Countries
- The geographical scope of the ACF consists of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. Considering the scale of certification programs in each country, they intend to spend at least 50% of the funds in Côte d’Ivoire
For more information, visit https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/business/sustainable-farming/africa-cocoa-fund-application/