Great Business Ideas Deserve Serious Investment

      Welcome to AECF Zimbabwe

We are delighted to announce the Round 3 competition of Zimbabwe Window to be launched soon. Keep an eye out for details.

The objective of AECF ZW R2 was to stimulate private sector businesses in Zimbabwe to find profitable ways of raising rural incomes by developing markets for products and services that meet the needs of the rural poor.


The AECF Zimbabwe Window (AECF ZW) is a special competition open only to business ideas in agribusiness and rural financial services that are to be implemented in Zimbabwe. AECF ZW R2 is funded by the Australian Government Aid Program and the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) and the AECF is supported in running the competition by Acumen Africa Consulting in Harare.

The AECF ZW makes funding available to private sector companies to support them in developing, testing and implementing new and innovative business ideas. AECF ZW funding takes the form of grants and repayable grants of up to US$1.5m, and will in Round 2 also make available both debt and equity on terms to be negotiated.

Progress to Date
Round one opened on 10th December 2009 and closed on 31st January 2010. There were 570 registrations and a very impressive 362 applications.

The Investment Committee selected the best 10 business ideas for funding. Together these 10 companies will receive over US$6m from the AECF in the form of grants and interest free loans. The AECF funds are expected to leverage at least four times this amount from the 10 companies' contributions to their own projects. The business ideas include agricultural inputs and output marketing, seed multiplication and distribution, a selection of smallholder out-grower schemes and a rural finance initiative. The AECF expects that over 780,000 rural households in Zimbabwe will benefit from these projects over the next four years.