CLOSED: Invitation to tender: Design of Fund for Frontier Tech Innovations in Agriculture
Innovation is going to be critical in achieving food security and sustainable food systems; the world needs to produce 60% more food by 2050. At the same time, agriculture as one of the main producers of greenhouse gases and a driver of biodiversity loss, must find ways to reduce its impact on the environment, while supporting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. While the complexity of these interlinked challenges cannot be underestimated, the advent of AI, Machine Learning and other frontier technologies offers a new opportunity to tackle these issues, with many applications offering transformative solutions to development issues.
FCDO believes that a new fund, which identifies, supports and transitions to scale impactful frontier tech innovations to support smallholder farmers and in the related value chains would complement its existing portfolio. This fund is likely to focus on pre-commercial, very early-stage innovations that are high-risk but also high potential and could bring about game-changing ideas that could transform the sector.
The Frontier Tech Hub is looking for a team of consultants/partners that can undertake some research on key challenges faced by smallholder farmers and low-income agricultural workers, to identify potential and promising emerging tech solutions and to initiate the design of an early stage agri-tech innovation fund. The team of consultants/partner will identify suitable contexts/geographies for an agri-tech innovation fund to take place. The innovation fund will be for the Africa region only and the scope of work for the team of consultants/partner will be Africa focused.
The Invitation to Tender document can be found by clicking this LINK.*
For those interested in applying, please note that the application deadline is 1st November 2024 23.59 UK time.
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
Please contact Frontiertechhub@DT-Global.com for further enquiries regarding this Terms of Reference or for further information on the Frontier Tech Hub.
*October 24th: The link to the ITT has now been updated with answers to questions raised before the deadline.