The Facility Investing for Employment (IFE), on behalf of the KfW Development Bank and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), signed two grant agreements to support two social impact projects in Rwanda.
The signing took place in Kigali on Monday, February 12, at the residence of the Ambassador of Germany in Rwanda. The grants are aimed to boost local enterprises thus creating jobs for more than 1,000 Rwandans.
One of the grants of €1.1 million was offered to Solid’ Africa, a local social enterprise that provides aid to the most vulnerable patients in Rwandan public hospitals, to establish an institute for culinary arts and nutrition. The money will assist in constructing a vocational training centre for chefs and other professional kitchen staff to meet the nutritional needs of low-income patients in hospitals and also serve in the country’s private sector, including hospitality and others.
VIDEO: Inside Solid Africa's kitchen that provides 5,000 meals to needy patients in hospitals
Solid’ Africa produces around 9,000 free meals a day for hospital patients in its canteen kitchens and sells over 4,000 meals to various private customers such as catering companies, and profits are reinvested into the organisation’s activities.
"Solid’ Africa is a good example of a social enterprise because they have been able to combine business with social bottom-line results, which impressed us. They will create over 850 jobs,” said Steffen Kuhl, the IFE Managing Director.
The second grant, worth €1.53 million was given to the Society for Family Health (SFH) with a focus on the creation of new jobs within the health sector through the construction of health posts and improving the capacity of health workers to deliver topnotch healthcare services in remote areas.
Kuhl added that both projects align with IFE’s special initiative dubbed "Jobs for a Just Transition.”
"SFH has been working with us for some time now, this is a second grant for them. The first was for the construction of 80 health posts and they will be building 20 more,” Kuhl added.
He stressed his gratitude for working with SFH to build health posts all over Rwanda to ensure medical services are brought closer to the population.
"This is an important partnership and it is coming at a time when we are scaling up our feeding programme at the national level. We recently signed a partnership with the government to expand our feeding programme to at least 47 district hospitals countrywide,” Nassir Katuramu, the Solid’ Africa CEO said.
Both grantees will contribute towards the full realisation of the projects, where the funding provided by IFE towards the establishment of the Institute for Culinary Arts and Nutrition is equivalent to 72 per cent. The remaining 28 per cent will be covered by Solid’ Africa.
The grant extended towards SFH is equivalent to 75 percent of the total cost of the project and the remaining part will be contributed by the grantee.