Call for Proposals: IFAD Somalia Women’s Market Access Innovation Challenge 2025 (Deadline: 31 August, 2025)

Proposals are invited for the IFAD Somalia Women’s Market Access Innovation Challenge 2025. The Open Innovation Challenge is a pivotal initiative designed to enhance agricultural innovation and empower entrepreneurs in Somalia to bring ideas to solve the challenges Somali women farmers face in accessing markets.

Women in rural Somalia play a crucial role in agriculture but face significant barriers to market access due to inadequate infrastructure, limited financial resources, limited access to agricultural land, systemic challenges, and cultural constraints. These challenges restrict their economic participation, limiting opportunities for women-led agrobusinesses to scale and thrive. Additionally, women entrepreneurs struggle with access to financing, business development services, and digital financial tools, further widening the gender gap in economic empowerment.

To address these challenges, the Rural Livelihoods Resilience Programme (RLRP) and the Somalia Food Systems Resilience Project (S-FSRP), implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MoAI) with support respectively from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Bank Group, are committed to strengthening women’s economic participation through entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, and innovative solutions. This includes improving access to credit, enhancing market linkages, and providing capacity-building initiatives to equip women with the skills needed to grow their businesses and adapt to market demands. The program also leverages digital financial services to increase financial accessibility for women, even those without internet access, while fostering community engagement and policy advocacy to create an inclusive economic environment.

Benefits

• Selected entrepreneurs will receive tailored business coaching, seed funding for product development, support in market access, and networking opportunities.  

Eligibility

• This open innovation challenge calls for proposals from legally registered, rural women-led enterprises, as well as businesses with at least 30 per cent women in their leadership team.
• Interested applicants should have a scalable solution, as well as a validated technological prototype to address the problem they are proposing to solve.
• The proposal should seek to achieve one or more of the following outcomes: enhance women’s access to agricultural markets; improve the competitiveness of women-led agribusinesses; and establish sustainable market linkages through innovation and technology and promote financial inclusion.

Application

The deadline for submission is August 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM Mogadishu time.

For more information, visit Somalia Women’s Market Access Innovation Challenge.

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