In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and the United States African Development Foundation, Nourishing Africa has developed the Entrepreneur Support Program.
The Nourishing Africa Entrepreneur Support Program is geared towards young Nigerian entrepreneurs who want to rebuild and strengthen their agri-food business.
Through a robust business support Program that leverages on ICT, data and innovation, the Entrepreneur Support Program aims to help grassroots and MSMEs, particularly women-led businesses, across the Nigeria's agriculture and food landscape rebuild and strengthen their businesses after the impact of COVID-19.
The Program will be carried out in four phases:
The Program is set to start on 18th January 2021. Applications for the Program are currently ongoing, and will be closed by midnight, 10th January 2021. All applicants will be subsequently notified on whether they have been selected to proceed with the Program
The Program is open to all Nigerian citizens aged between 20 – 40 years, who own and run a food or agriculture business in the following states:
Abia, Anambra, Delta, Edo
Abuja FCT, Kaduna, Kano Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo
Yes. Applicants must be aged between 20 years to 40 years old.
Yes. The Program is open ONLY to businesses within the food and agriculture sector
No. Only businesses located in the following states can apply: Abia, Anambra, Delta, Edo Abuja FCT, Kaduna, Kano Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo
No. Businesses at the idea stage are NOT eligible to apply. The Program is aimed to support already existing agri-food businesses to recover from the shocks of COVID-19
Businesses that have been running for at least six (6) months are eligible to apply.
While we encourage agri-food business owners to become members of Nourishing Africa (due to its many benefits such as access to more funding opportunities and markets), a verified membership account is NOT part of the application criteria for the ongoing Program.
While we recommend that business owners duly register their businesses, unregistered businesses are eligible to apply for this Program. However, if such businesses successfully proceed through the Program stages and are selected to receive funding, they will be required to register with the CAC before funding is disbursed to them
All applications must be submitted online. Unfortunately, applications are now closed.
No. All applications must be submitted only through the ONLINE application form at www.nourishingafrica.com/esp. Applications are now closed.
Please first ensure your internet connection is strong.
If the problem persists, please try using a different web browser (for example: if you used a Chrome browser initially and encountered challenges, try using a Mozilla Firefox web browser).
Yes, you can resume your application at any time before midnight, 10th January 2021 by going back to the application form at www.nourishingafrica.com/esp and entering in the email address and password you used to start the application.
No. Any submitted applications cannot be edited. Ensure to review your application before clicking the submit button.
The application form is open till midnight, 10th January 2021. It will NOT be possible to submit any applications after this date. Successful applicants will be selected and notified, and the Entrepreneur Support Program will commence on the 25th January 2021.
You must answer all the mandatory questions in the application form and provide accurate and up-to-date information.
800 applicants will be selected to proceed from the application stage to the first stage of the Entrepreneur Support Program, which is the Business Resilience Diagnostic tool stage.
No. Nourishing Africa does not charge any applicants a fee for applying to the Program.
Successful applicants will be notified on 25th January 2021 via the email address they have used in their application form.
It will be available to the chosen applicants from the 1st of February 2021.
The 800 successful applicants who are selected from the application stage will all be eligible to take the Business Resilience Diagnostic tool.
500 participants will be selected to proceed to the next stage, which is the seminar training stage.
More information will be shared with successful applicants in due course.
The seminar training is tailored towards building your business to be more resilient and scalable.
No. The training will be done ONLINE.
The training is part-time for 12 days.
Training will be between 3 – 4 hours per day. However, you may have daily tasks and activities beyond the training periods which you need to deliver on.
More information will be shared with successful applicants in due course.
Funding provided to selected applicants are direct small grants, phased over a 1-year period.
To qualify for funding, applicants will have successfully passed through the application stage, the online business diagnostic tool and the seminar training.
125 participants who successfully complete the seminar training stage will be selected for the direct small grant interventions phased over a 1-year period. The other applicable entrepreneurs will be connected to our financial partners for favourable funding options.