Eligibility and Application

Eligibility

Although the Fund is focused on innovation and helping you realise your ideas to solve real business issues, we have specific criteria for who and what the Fund can fund.
Applicants are expected to contribute their own resources to the project, bearing at least 25% of the project cost for Windows 1 and 4, and 50% of the total project cost for Windows 2, 3 and 5. The grant awarding panel will take into consideration the contributions of each applicant when deciding between applications.

Applicants

To be eligible to apply for funding, the organisation (the lead applicant in the case of a consortium or partnership), must:

• Be registered and operating in Nigeria (whether domestic or foreign owned or a joint venture) in compliance with relevant business licensing, taxation, employee and other relevant regulations in Nigeria;
• Be a for-profit (intending to generate a return for shareholders/members) private sector or joint venture enterprise or state owned enterprise that operates commercially and without Government subsidy*; or, for Window 4 only, be a self-financed BMO.
• Be in satisfactory financial health (in terms of being a “going concern” as defined by the Fund), and be able to show at least two years of unqualified audited accounts; and
• Have adequate internal capacity to undertake the project within the agreed timeframe.

Note: Business membership organisations and associations, training institutions, NGOs and Civil Society organisations are eligible to apply for funding through Windows 1,2,3, and 5, provided they are in a consortium/partnership led by an eligible private sector business.

Projects

To be eligible to apply for funding, a project must:

• Contribute to improved employment and income opportunities for low-income groups in the construction sector.
• Involve a product, service, system or procedure that is innovative, and is unlikely to be addressed by the private sector without the support of the Fund – for example because of sector inertia or perceived risk/opportunity cost.
• Result in improvements in the performance of the sector.
• Demonstrate a sustained impact and how results will last beyond the lifetime of the project funding.
• Not be easily supported by other commercial sources of finance.
• Not create unfair competition or otherwise distort markets.
• Utilise the funding provided by the Fund within two years, other than in exceptional circumstances.