Deadline: 22 May 2015
Securing Water for Food: A Grand Challenge for Development Competition (Round 3) designed to address barriers to enable the production of more food with less water and/or make more water available for food production, processing, and distribution, is now open for applications. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Sweden, and the Foreign Ministry of the Kingdom of the Netherlands invite eligible organizations to respond to this call. This is a global call with estimated budget USD 12.5 million, an additional $2.5 million will be available for innovations implemented in the MENA region.
Grant allocated per project will be in between $100,000 USD and $3,000,000 USD depending on the type of funding requested for up to three years long project. Innovators can come from anywhere in the world, but implementation must take place in a developing or emerging country. Through Securing Water for Food, the organizers hope to increase both the demand for and availability of innovative water technologies and approaches; increase adoption of those innovations at multiple levels (from small scale farms to large corporations); and improve the sustainability of innovations through robust partnerships and business-to-business relationships.
Innovations can be in any of the following stages of development
- Stage 1 – Market-driven product/business development
- Stage 2 – Scaling/Commercial Growth
The focus of the challenge is to support game-changing innovations at two stages, both of which must be post-pilot. Securing Water for Food will not provide funding for traditional development programs and is not looking to evaluate proposals that present conventional approaches. The call will not fund proposals that do not present a viable business model, particularly in the Stage 2 category where this aspect must be especially well developed.
