The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is the second phase of a program from theMastercard Foundation. The first phase was the Fund for Rural Prosperity, an eight-year program established in 2014. That Fund supported 38 participants from 15 countries in Africa to innovate and scale up financial products and services targeting rural populations with a large focus on smallholder farmers. One major highlight is the Fund enabled over 5.3 million people to have better access to financial products and services, exceeding an initial target of 1 million.
As a result of this success and learnings gathered, the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity, a new, seven-year, US$ 126 million fund was established in 2023. This Fund aims to catalyze, scale-up and sustain the creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men with limited financial means, including young people with disabilities and refugee youth, through SMEs, in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Fund aims to support an innovative portfolio with high impact potential for creating and sustaining dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men with limited financial means.
The Fund for Resilience and Prosperity aims to address a broad spectrum of challenges in order to create dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young people using four interventions:
Offering direct financial support through a challenge fund in order to create and sustain work opportunities for young women and men with limited financial means, including young people with disabilities and refugee youth, through SMEs.
Providing support and negotiation of partnerships with potential financiers to ensure sustainability.
Adding value beyond financial support through technical assistance and capacity building to address the barriers concerning human capital and access to markets.
Convening relevant stakeholders to encourage an enabling business environment through experienced partners and digital platforms to drive systematic change and address the issues that impede the creation of work opportunities for the youth, especially young women.
The Fund objective is to catalyze, scale-up and sustain the creation of dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young women and men with limited financial means, including young people with disabilities and refugee youth, through SMEs, in 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will ensure a distribution of solutions that can sustainably create dignified and fulfilling work for young people even after the end of the program.
The countries are Benin, Burundi, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
The Mastercard Foundation is working with partners to implement this seven-year program. The Fund Manager for the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity is KPMG Development Services Limited in partnership with Triple Line Consulting, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Partner.
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