A US$16 million challenge fund has been opened for innovators who can devise a strategy to crack the code into reducing the cost of transport and logistics in East Africa. The Logistics Innovation for Trade (LIFT) challenge fund will provide grants ranging from US$ 200,000/= to US$ 750,000/= to winning proposals from innovators from across the world but whose ideas will be implemented in East Africa.
LIFT is managed by TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) Challenge Fund with funding support from UK-DFID; and seeks to trigger and introduce innovative approaches to tackling freight and transport costs in East Africa region. East Africa is reported to have the highest freight and transport costs in the world; over 50% higher than the USA and Europe per kilometre. Indeed, transport costs for land locked countries in the region can be as high as 75% of the value of exports.Transit times have the most significant effect on exports and also result in firms having to carry higher levels of stocks making them less efficient. Winning LIFT project will contribute to TMEA objective of reducing transport time along the main East Africa transport corridors by 15% by 2016.
The scope for increasing investment and innovation in the transport and logistics industry of East Africa is huge. Logistics innovations are usually classified into 2 broad groups:
Technological:shipment tracking, driver hour monitoring, scheduling, and warehouse automation management systems amongst others; and
Administrative (non-technological): Fourth Party Logistics (4PL), use of shared services such as warehousing, transport and consolidation centres, and formation of alliances of SMEs such as the pallet networks, provide a few potential examples.
Applications are currently ongoing and will run till 31st Jan 2015. You can make your submission by going to lift-fund.com/apply