The Outcomes Accelerator Announces First Cohort of Outcomes-based Financing Projects

In its first round of funding, the Outcomes Accelerator Governing Committee is pleased to announce it has selected three projects to receive Accelerator funding and support, following a highly competitive call for proposals that generated 84 expressions of interest (EOIs).

The Outcomes Accelerator is a catalytic platform to accelerate more effective testing, scaling, and mainstreaming of outcomes-based financing in the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It offers flexible funding, targeted expertise, and networking to support project proponents in bringing their early- and late-stage projects to launch.

The Governing Committee of the Outcomes Accelerator is comprised by its funders, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the UBS Optimus Foundation and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK (FCDO), who are supported by Levoca LLC as the Secretariat.

The first Accelerator call for proposals generated a robust pipeline of outcomes-based financing (OBF) projects across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and from all six regions in 45 ODA recipient countries. These 84 EOIs addressed important and diverse SDG areas and were aimed at launching a range of OBF instruments including impact bonds, outcome funds, social impact guarantees, pay-for-performance contracts, and impact-linked financing for enterprises.

The three winning projects are primarily focused on three SDG areas: SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 3 (Health), and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth). They will address important development challenges such as maternal health in Angola, eye care services and educational outcomes for school-aged children in Vietnam, and scaling of private sector innovations within African medical supply chains. Accelerator funding will help these projects complete critical feasibility and design work in order to launch. All proposals were competitively assessed against pre-defined evaluation and eligibility criteria that can be found here.

Congratulations to the teams! The Governing Committee looks forward to partnering closely with these exciting initiatives and seeing the results materialize on the ground. The Governing Committee would also like to thank all applicants and commend them for their work on such important development challenges and innovative ideas. The next call for proposals for the second cohort is expected to be announced in third quarter 2023.

The winning proposals are:

• Catalyzing a Results-Driven Supply Chain to Improve Health Outcomes in Africa: Total Impact Capital and partners, such as the Africa Resource Centre (ARC), will aim to undertake late-stage design to work launch a Pay-for-Performance Supply Chain Trust to enhance the performance of private sector medical supply chains in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Rwanda. 
• Scaling Maternal Health Solutions in Angola: MAZE Impact and partners aim to scale up an innovative maternal health intervention and design an impact bond to improve the lives of 30,000 pregnant women and their families in the province of Luanda.
• Schools Eye Health Accelerator in Vietnam: Vision Catalyst Fund, Tri-Sector Associates, and partners will aim to design a Social Impact Guarantee (SIG) to fund a government-driven school eye health program in Vietnam to improve the quality of and access to eye care services and educational outcomes for children.

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Accelerator Manager: