A consortium of a maximum of two partners (a UK and either a Brazilian, Ghanaian or Nigerian partner) can apply for up to £20,000 for travel to build new relationships between organisations to accelerate the testing and development of technologies and/or practices that promote climate-smart agriculture for sustainable food production systems in Ghana and Nigeria.

Climate-Smart Agriculture Partnership: UK-Brazil-Africa is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and delivered by Innovate UK. This brings together innovative people and organisations to promote climate-smart agriculture in Africa.

In this competition, up to £400,000 of total funding (up to £20,000 per project) is available for Travel Grants.

Travel must be completed between the 1 August 2025 and end on the 31st January 2026.

What is a Travel Grant?

The aim of the Travel Grants is to explore and build new collaborations between businesses, or between public and private organisations across the UK, Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria to accelerate the testing and development of technologies and practices that promote climate-smart agriculture for sustainable food production systems in Ghana and Nigeria.

The Travel Grants are for innovators who do not yet have trilateral partners and need to undertake further explorative discussions to gather necessary information ahead of building a future innovation funding application.

Travel Grant applications must show how the travel will be used to strengthen partnerships and increase engagement between research institutions and the private sector across the UK, Brazil and Africa.Two partners should apply for a travel grant, one from the UK and one from another country (Brazil, Ghana or Nigeria) to meet with other potential collaborators in a third country to explore opportunities for future R&D collaboration.

For example, an application could include a UK partner and a Brazilian partner travelling to meet with potential collaborators in Africa (Ghana and/or Nigeria) to explore how an idea or technology could be applied. Alternatively, a UK and a Ghanaian partner could travel to Brazil to understand how a problem shared between Ghana and Brazil is being addressed in Brazil and to meet with potential Brazilian collaborators.

Travel Grants will cover the costs of travel and subsistence of two named partners. This could include covering the costs of:

• in-country visits to exchange ideas with potential partners around a particular innovation or challenge
• demonstrations of innovative solutions to potential in-country partners
• exploring the options and requirements for adaptation of a technology to a new market with in-country partners
• developing project ideas and proof of market or concept work

The individual potential collaborators that the two partner applicants intend to visit do not need to have been confirmed at the time of application to apply for this competition, but a strategy to identify and meet with these should be outlined.

Following the Travel Grant, trilateral consortia may be able to apply for future innovation funding to work on the opportunities with partners identified during their Travel Grant.
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A consortium of 3-4 international partners (one from UK, one from Brazil, one from Ghana or Nigeria, and optionally one more from any of those four countries) can apply for up to £100,000 for an Innovation Award to accelerate the testing and/or development of technologies and/or practices that promote climate-smart agriculture for sustainable food production systems in Ghana or Nigeria.

Climate-Smart Agriculture Partnership: UK-Brazil-Africa is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and delivered by Innovate UK. This brings together innovative people and organisations to promote climate-smart agriculture in Africa.

In this competition, up to £700,000 of total funding (up to £100,000 per project) is available for Innovation Awards.

These projects will start on the 1 August 2025. Projects must finish by the 28 February 2026.

What is an Innovation Award?

Projects should focus on exploring an innovation which will promote climate-smart agriculture approaches to address a challenge in food production systems in Ghana or Nigeria. Projects must demonstrate how their specified challenge will be overcome through a defined collaborative research/innovation project. All partners should be fully integrated into the project leadership. There should be equitable involvement in decision-making and setting the direction for the project, your team’s approach to achieving this should be clearly defined within your project plan. This should be reflected within the project budget, with justified distribution of resources across partners and with no single partner dominating the resource allocation without clear justification.

Projects must demonstrate a compelling business-led motivation, a focus on identifying commercial opportunities and define a clear business-related challenge or evidence of demand for innovation. Projects can be innovative either from a commercial or technical perspective.

Projects could involve, for example, the transfer of a technology or practice from one country to another, the co-development of a new technology or practice, research into a new solution or knowledge-sharing from a research base into commercial organisations.

Applications must include a registered business (of any size) as one of the partner organisations. Applications must include at least 3 partners, with 1 partner from each geography i.e. UK, Brazil, Africa (Ghana or Nigeria). An additional fourth partner from any of the four countries is allowed. Consortia must include:

• a UK-registered organisation (who is also the Administrative Lead and will submit the application)
• a Brazil-registered organisation
• either a Nigerian or Ghana-registered organisation
• an additional fourth partner organisation from any of the four countries (UK, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria) may be included, but is not required.
  
  Read more and apply Innovation Awards for Climate-Smart Agriculture Partnerships: UK-Brazil-Africa - Innovate UK Business Connect

The 2025 Joint Transnational Call will address the SRIA theme 4 “Water and health”, in particular the sub-themes:

• 4.3 on “Innovative water tools and technologies for water quality monitoring and water treatment, remediation and disinfection”
• 4.1 on “Behaviour and effects of contaminants of emerging concern, plastics, endocrine disruptors”.

Links to other SRIA themes will be explored, in particular to the sub-themes:

• 3.3. “Groundwater management” and to the cross-cutting themes on governance,
• 7.1 “Developing methods for more efficient citizen and wider stakeholder engagement” and 7.3 “Supporting the adoption of innovations”.