Scaling Up Youth Innovation For Adaptation in IFI Projects:
In-country YouthADAPT Challenge and Dragon’s Den event
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is an international organisation that works as a solutions broker to catalyse action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, in partnership with the public and private sector, to ensure we learn from each other and work together for a climate-resilient future. Adapting to the impacts of climate change provides a “win-win” for health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth. The work of the GCA elevates the visibility and political importance of climate adaptation. It facilitates solutions, such as more innovative investments, new technologies and better planning to become more resilient to climate-related threats. GCA is a rapidly growing organisation with offices in Abidjan, Beijing, Dhaka, Groningen, and Rotterdam.
AFRICA ADAPTATION ACCELERATION PROGRAM (AAAP)
In Africa, GCA implements its strategy through the flagship Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), launched in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to scale up adaptation efforts and mobilize finance for climate-resilient development across the continent. To date, GCA has integrated adaptation solutions into nearly $10 billion of investments funded by international financial institutions (IFIs) throughout Africa. The AAAP focuses on four key pillars where investments in adaptation and resilience yield high economic returns: Food Security, Infrastructure and Nature-based Solutions, Youth Entrepreneurship and Adaptation Jobs, and Adaptation Finance.
The AAAP focuses on four areas:
- Food Security: with a goal of influencing at least $10 billion in investments by 2025 to build climate-smart agriculture and resilient food systems supporting food security for at least 38 million farmers and herders in 26 African countries.
- Infrastructure and Nature-based Solutions: with a goal of mainstreaming innovative climate resilience solutions, including nature-based solutions, into $12 billion worth of investments in infrastructure for water, transport, energy, and urban systems by 2025.
- Youth Entrepreneurship and Adaptation Jobs: with a goal of supporting one million youth with entrepreneurship skills and create five million climate adaptation jobs through IFI investments worth over $2 billion by 2025.
- Adaptation Finance: with a goal of unlocking access to $1 billion in climate adaptation finance by 2025 by designing innovative public and private financial instruments and solutions, including structuring resilience bonds and debt for-resilience swaps. This also includes influencing IFI investments for the financial sector and developing aggregation mechanisms for climate adaptation investment assets and monetization of adaptation benefits.
Project Context & Overview
The GCA’s Youth and Jobs program aims to mainstream adaptation jobs on the African continent by scaling-up youth innovation and supporting youth-led enterprises in climate adaptation and resilience with the goal of enhancing the entrepreneurial skills of 1 million youth and influencing $2 billion worth of projects by 2025. This is done through two strategic focus areas:
Focus Area 1: YouthADAPT Program in scaling up youth-led innovation in adaptation through enterprise strengthening:
- YouthADAPT Challenge.
- In-country YouthADAPT for Investment Projects.
Focus Area 2: Institutionalizing adaptation curricula in Investment projects:
- Skills Development: Adaptation capacity building via embedding curricula in universities, vocational (TVET) centers and higher institutions.
Under focus area 1, GCA will focus on scaling local adaptation enterprises through the ‘In-country YouthAdapt Challenge for investment’ projects. This initiative aims to identify innovative adaptation enterprises led by young entrepreneurs to solve project adaptation needs, providing them with micro grants and incubation support to help scale their businesses. The YouthAdapt Challenge is implemented in close coordination with GCA’s other programs working on evaluating adaptation investment needs and solutions that can be mainstreamed through International Financial Institution’s investments.
To unlock private sector financing to help the young enterprises scale their climate adaptation business, the program will build on the skills developed during the incubation and impact generated from the initial grants to host a ‘Dragon’s Den’ type event, providing a platform for winning enterprises to showcase their adaptation solutions to a diverse audience of investors, including commercial banks, private equity firms, venture capitalists, and other potential financiers.
Project Objective
GCA aims to establish a Subgrant Agreement with an implementing partner to provide targeted technical assistance under focus area 1, through two distinct components. The first aims at both designing and implementing an incubation program, while the second will link the youth enterprises with domestic private sector financing through the dragon’s den type event:
- Component 1 – Scaling Adaptation Enterprises: This component targets enterprise strengthening by identifying and incubating local enterprises that address climate adaptation and resilience needs in vulnerable sectors. Through technical assistance and capacity building, the partner together with GCA, will help these enterprises to become more attractive to 4 5 investors, enabling them to secure and effectively deploy financing towards adaptation and resilience initiatives as they grow.
- Component 2 – Unlocking Domestic Private Sector Financing: This component targets organizing financial health checks of the enterprises, providing a series of workshops and training sessions focused on investor readiness, including but not limited to, pitch development, financial modeling, business valuation, and negotiation skills, and coordinating the dragon’s den type event to connect the winners with investors.
As part of the proposal, the partner must demonstrate the capability to conduct the key activities required for both components listed above.
The technical partner will work under the overall guidance of the Global Centre on Adaptation, the African Development Bank and the Project PIU. The in-country YouthADAPT challenge and incubation will be carried out within 12 Months and the Dragon Den event within 4 Months.
How to apply
Only registered non-profit organizations (INGO, NGO, CBO, Company Limited by Guarantee) are eligible to receive a sub-grant from GCA.
The organizations responding to this call must meet the minimum eligibility criteria and demonstrate their capacity to implement all the technical criteria.
The Proposal and all supporting documents must be submitted as a PDF, no later than 6th Dec 2024, 5:00pm, Central European Time (CET) to
subgrants@gca.org and cc’d to aramide.abe@gca.org and gloria.gowal@gca.org. The proposal must include:
- Proposal template addressing the details outlined in this call.
- Integrated Workplan and Logical Framework template.
- Completed Partner Information Document & Minimum Required Documents.
- Budget and Financial Reporting Template.
Proposals received after the closing date and time will not be considered. Organizations will be notified once a decision about the Sub-Grant is made.
For all questions or requests for additional information contact aramide.abe@gca.org and gloria.gowal@gca.org, cc’d to subgrants@gca.org up until the 22nd of November. The email subject heading should be clearly marked with the following information: In-Country YouthADAPT CFP. If an interested organization has concerns about completing the template, please reach out.
The Proposal and all supporting documents must be drafted in English.
GCA reserves the right to decline disclosure of the specificity of decision derived by GCA mission due to reasons related to confidentiality.
GCA reserves the right to accept or reject any submissions, and to annul the selection process and reject all submissions at any time, without thereby incurring any liability to the affected Implementing Partners.