The Malawi Innovative Challenge Fund (MICF) has entered its second phase, a stage through which the fund will seek to support Malawi in its quest to achieve inclusive private sector development.<\/p>\n
The fund is working at helping Malawi broaden its export base to ensure that more people benefit from economic growth.<\/p>\n
During the launch of the new window which took place in Blantyre on Tuesday, MICF challenged the private sector to be innovative and to come up with new projects that will transform the country.<\/p>\n
MICF is jointly funded by the UK, DFID, and German Government through KWF and the UNDP.<\/p>\n
DFID Malawi Growth and Resilience Team Leader, Rachel Perrin, said the fund was born out of the recognition that the private sector is where issues of poverty reduction and human development can be addressed.<\/p>\n
She said growth, jobs and opportunity should emanate from the private sector, rather than solely placing reliance on the government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe private sector includes the poor as well as businesses, and is the primary engine of growth. Risk taking to earn profits and incomes provides the motivation for private actors, including the poor, to participate in markets, and driving growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, as we have witnessed, despite significant progress in reducing poverty and improvements in human development indicators in Malawi, far too many Malawians have not benefited from the economic growth of recent times and remain in poverty,\u201d said Perrin.<\/p>\n
German Embassy Deputy Head of Development Cooperation Christine de Barros Said said as a country they are proud to support the new window of the MICF with a contribution of three million Euros.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new window marks an important step in supporting Malawi\u2019s pursuit of inclusive private sector development that broadens its export base but also ensures that more Malawians benefit from economic growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cChallenge funds are not for people who are high on ambition but lack the capacity to execute the project and deliver meaningful results. Nor is it for companies that have relatively low-risk projects that can readily access commercial bank lending or other kinds of conventional financing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Said further said MICF is looking for projects that are somewhat \u2018out of the box\u2019, but could bring about a major change for the benefit of the poor, if successful.<\/p>\n
UNDP Deputy Resident Representative responsible for Operations, Katarzyna Wawiernia, said over the past year and a half, the MICF has begun to demonstrate that there is a resilient and emerging private sector in Malawi that has acquired capacity to innovate and evolve despite the country\u2019s challenging economic environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that the creativity and innovativeness of the private sector that was so clearly demonstrated by the first round of the MICF projects, will lead to the implementation of even more interesting and successful projects that will have a tangible impact on the livelihoods of the poor under these two windows of the MICF,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Malawi Innovative Challenge Fund (MICF) has entered its second phase, a stage through which the fund will seek to support Malawi in its quest to achieve inclusive private sector development. The fund is working at helping Malawi broaden its export base to ensure that more people benefit from economic growth. During the launch of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27998,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27995\/revisions\/27998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}