In Malawi, UNDP drives various initiatives to support the growth of startup companies, crowd in impact investment for sustainable enterprises, and scale innovations and productive investments in agriculture, manufacturing and renewable energy sectors. Among these are the Growth Accelerator (GA) Malawi, Malawi’s first business accelerator programme, which provides risk-sharing capital up to the value of USD40,000, technical assistance, and business development services to youth-led startups. Another is the Green Economic Transition Facility (GETF) which provides catalytical matched-grant finance up to the value of USD250,000 to de-risk investment into innovative green products, businesses, and industries.
Imani Development and Landell-Mills International implement both programmes, providing services that include establishing the GETF and taking over implementation of the Growth Accelerator Malawi, day-to-day operational management of both facilities, launching calls for and conducting due-diligence in the selection of beneficiary projects and firms, and delivering technical assistance, business development services, mentoring support, financial oversight, and performance monitoring to participating enterprises. By September 2024 the GETF had committed over USD1.3mn in grants and disbursed nearly USD300,000 which supported firms in leveraging an additional USD300,000 in additional finance, and the GA had committed nearly USD600,000 and disbursing USD290,000 to its sixth cohort of firms.