Applications for Round One now open

Applications for round one are open to organisations and consortium in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. For the first bidding round, the deadline for the fund manager to receive the Concept Notes is 5 December 2008, 17:00 South African time.

In Kenya, FEF has partnered with the Financial Education Partnership (FEP) to provide joint funding. FEP is a Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya initiative. Applications in Kenya is must be sent to FSD. The deadlines for Concept Notes is 5 December 2008, 17:00 Kenyan time.

The application process has two steps:

1 Every organisation (or consortium) wishing to apply for FEF funding must submit a short Concept Note to the Fund Manager setting out the basic project idea and how they will implement it. Based on the suitability and quality of the Concept Notes, the Investment Panel will decide which organisations to invite to develop full applications.

2. Short-listed applicants will be invited to develop full Applications and submit these to the Fund Manager. The Fund Manager will do an initial assessment of the applications and the capacity of the applicants. Applications are then submitted to the Investment Panel which selects the winning projects. The Investment Panel may impose conditions on any grant.

To download applications forms and guidelines click below:

The Concept Note for proposals in Kenya is available on the FSD Kenya website at www.fsdkenya.org

How long does the approval process take?

From the time the Concept Notes are received by the fund manager, it takes between three and four for the grants to be awarded. Here is the schedule for the first bidding round:

(Please note that some of these dates might be updated)

Details of where to send the Concept Notes are on page 2