Applications are now open for the Rainforest Alliance’s Africa Cocoa Fund (ACF) to create measurable,
long-lasting positive impact by building the capacity of those certified cocoa
farmers who most need assistance to implement their 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.
Through ACF’s support, certified smallholder
producer groups, cooperatives and farmers or vulnerable members who need
support will become empowered to monitor their performance, improving
their ability to use and access data and enhance their capacity to make
informed decisions for their long-term continuous improvement.
The Africa Cocoa Fund (ACF) has been set up to
provide financial and technical assistance to:
- Create measurable, long-lasting
positive impact by building the capacity of those certified cocoa farmers
who most need assistance to implement their certification standards for
sustainable agriculture
- Support sustainability projects
for cocoa farmers and their landscapes beyond their certification
requirements.
Categories
- Primary Focus
- Interventions that support and
build the capacity of certified cocoa farmers in West and Central Africa,
who most need assistance to implement their standards and assurance
requirements.
- Addressing child labor:
implementing CLMRS, Assess & Address, Remediation actions, and gender
& youth inclusion
- Geodata – location points and
polygon collection: collecting location points and polygons to enable
compliance with the High Conservation Value (HCV) areas, forest
protection and protected area criteria of the standard
- Digitization of 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.
- Secondary Focus
- Interventions that go beyond
the requirements of their certification programs, but that are aligned
with their organizational strategy and core intervention.
- Income diversification
- Skill development: coaching
and negotiations, local advocacy, Internal Management System (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 (IPM), soil health
and other climate-smart strategies
- Living income: proof of
concept about paying living income to
farmers
Funding Information
During this second call for applications they’ll
distribute US$1,350,000 out of the total US$5 million
fund.
Eligibility Criteria
- The geographical scope of the
ACF consists of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. Considering
the scale of their certification programs in each country, they intend to
spend at least 50% of the funds in Côte
d’Ivoire.
- you are a member or certificate
holder or smallholder producer group with limited technical assistance
support through supply chain partners or other channels
- you are member or certificate
holder or smallholder producer group that already had ample access to
technical assistance or you’re a private cooperative. Your
application will be considered if
- there is additional 1:1
co-financing by a supply chain actor or if
- the initiative is part of a
Public-Private Partnership.
- All projects under the ACF will
be driven by farmers and intend to create positive impact for the longer
term.
Post Date - 28-May-2021