The AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund is a European Union initiative to support productive and market-integrated smallholder agriculture through the provision of financial support worth EUR 18,000,000 to agri– enterprises. AgriFI aims to improve the capacity of smallholder farmers/pastoralists to practise environmentally sustainable and climate-smart agriculture as a business in inclusive value chains.

The Challenge Fund is funded by the European Union and co-funded by SlovakAid. The European Investment Bank (EIB) – under the AgriFI Kenya programme – is providing long term local currency financing to Equity Bank (Kenya) Limited for on-lending to eligible food and agriculture sector projects. Match funding is also available for successful applicants. Self Help Africa and Imani Development Limited are the Challenge Fund Managers.

The Challenge Fund is part of the wider AgriFI programme funded under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) to unlock, accelerate and leverage investments within value chains in Kenya. To date, the Challenge Fund has concluded two rounds of applications committing Euro 11 million to Kenyan companies across varied value chains such as dairy, horticulture, grains, livestock. The projects will engage farmers across the country, in more than 30 counties. Self Help Africa is currently working with over 20 companies – the companies have together committed to reach over 200,000 farmers and create more than 13,000 job opportunities. The Third Call will be opened for applications in July 2020 and successful companies contracted in January 2021.  The wider AgriFi programme consists of a Food Safety component managed by MESPT and the Climate Smart Agricultural Productivity Project managed by KALRO.

Covid-19 Response and Recovery Call

AgriFI challenge fund is responding to the challenges and changing environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic through an allocation of EUR 1,500,000 Covid-19 Response and Recovery restricted Call .