The Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP) has announced it will give five companies a total of $4,438,551. The Foundation selected these five companies during the final phase of the FRP’s rolling competition.
Lima Kwanza Limited, PROSEMA-SA (Promotion du Sésame du Mali), Savonor, Sprint Money Limited, and Syecomp Ghana Limited are the five companies that were chosen. In the first three phases of the rolling competition, the FRP awarded $11,814,064 to 12 companies.
The FRP supports innovative financial services that improve the lives of poor people living in rural Africa. Since its first awards in 2016, the FRP has distributed more than $41.5 million to companies across the continent. Its current overall portfolio includes 38 projects spread across 15 African countries.
“These new awardees expand and enrich the Fund’s portfolio through their innovative projects, which cut across various sectors,” said Wambui Chege, Team Leader of the FRP. “The Fund is excited by the potential impact of the projects in its portfolio and will now direct focus to project implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and sharing emerging learnings from the portfolio with financial inclusion stakeholders. We look forward to driving financial access and meeting the needs of the rural poor across Africa.”
According to Lindsay Wallace, Director of Strategy and Learning at Mastercard Foundation, the latest additions to the FRP portfolio enables poor people in rural Africa to benefit from financial services, often for the first time. It also strengthens the FRP as a place where others can learn about what works at scale.
More so, Mastercard International created the Mastercard Foundation (MCF) in 2006. The foundation operates independently under its own board. And it strongly pursues its mission to advance learning and promote financial inclusion for people living in poverty.