CALL FOR PRE-QUALIFICATION OF BUSINESS SERVICE PROVIDERS

The Cooperative Housing Foundation, doing business as Global Communities, implements the Agribusiness Investment for Market Stimulation (AIMS) Program, a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded three country initiative to support small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) to increase their volumes and value in agriculture trade.

AIMS has identified access to finance as a key component in enhancing A-SMEs operations. Access to finance is however limited because of various constraints faced by A-SMEs including inadequate documentation of their operations. As part of A-SME loan assessment, proper documentation of business operations including financial reports are an integral requirement by financial institutions to facilitate loan repayment capacity evaluation. Lack of documentation or poor quality documentation often lead to loan ineligibility by A-SMEs with credit worthy business operations.

In view of this, AIMS will support capacity building initiatives that facilitate documentation of business operations including development of financial reports. This will involve A-SME support and guidance on maintaining financial records, book keeping and accounting, business plan development and cash flow projections. A key deliverable in these engagements with A-SMEs shall be 3 years’ financial reports

Global Communities is therefore seeking to pre-qualify business advisory service providers (BASPs) in Kenya and Malawi to provide assistance to agribusiness SMEs, including producer groups and cooperatives to address these service needs.

The purpose of this RFA is to therefore to invite qualifying firms desirous to provide business advisory services to submit their application for pre-qualification.

The pre-qualification is currently ongoing and received applications are evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Interested applicants should download the respective RFA for the country they operate in and complete the annexed application form.

Kindly read the Request for Application document before completing Annex A. The RFA for each country is available on the links below: