Deadline: 9th February, 2026
INCiTiS-FOOD aims at revolutionizing African city region food systems by enhance food and nutrition security (FNS) across four core dimensions – availability, access, utilization, and stability through solutions centered around soilless crop farming, recirculating aquaculture systems, and insect farming. These circular agri-food technologies have been considered suitable for the context of African cities because they do not require great access to land, water, or other resources allowing Africa to thrive.
Through co-creation of cutting-edge circular agri-food technologies, practices, and business models, INCiTiS-FOOD is creating an inclusive food system that is both sustainable and accessible. With 8 living labs across 6 countries and a user-centric approach, INCiTiS-FOOD is applying a Lean Start-up Methodology to launch innovative technologies, services, practices, and products – empowering stakeholders to shape the future of food in Africa.
INCiTiS-FOOD strives to positively impact food and nutritional security trough EU-AU partnerships in Africa by utilizing hydroponics, recirculating aquaculture, aquaponics and insect farming and fostering collaboration among all relevant stakeholders along the supply and value chain, including women and young adults, start-ups, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Funding
To reinforce multi-actor collaborations on main food system challenges and boost the overall impact of INCiTiS-FOOD, 2 Open Calls as part of the Cascade Fund and the FSTP mechanism will be launched. The budget dedicated to the Cascade Fund is 1,000,000€ in total. For better urban and peri-urban food systems across Africa, the Open Calls will provide:
• grants to 8 Local Innovation Hubs (consisting of 2-3 legal entities, 16-24 in total), can be located also outside the INCiTiS-FOOD countries – total dedicated sum 940,000€.
• prizes to 24 independent innovators from 8 cities and towns that are hosting INCiTiS-FOOD Living Labs (3 winners per LL) – 60,000€.
Eligibility
INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call for II is aimed at individuals residing in one of the 8 cities or towns hosting INCiTiS-FOOD LLs.
• Applicants need to be a individuals, start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
● The applicants must be legally established in order to be able to sign the sub-grantee agreement, in case they are selected for funding. Having a valid VAT number is mandatory, however, in case having VAT number is not mandatory according to the national legislation of the applicant’s country, a registration number from the respective national authority (National business registry, Commercial court or similar) must be provided.
● Existing consortium members of INCiTiS-FOOD project and their affiliated entities are not eligible for the INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call.
● The proposal is delivered before the defined deadline, applying the requested submission procedure.
● Proposals shall only ask for funding for that part of the work that is not yet accomplished and will be carried out after having been selected for funding. Of course, this does not exclude the usage of e.g., results, IP, infrastructures or approaches already held by the applicants.
● Each applicant may submit only one proposal to the INCiTiS-FOOD Open Call 2. In case an applicant submits more than one application in Open Call, only the last one received (timestamp of the system) will be considered, and the remaining applications will automatically be excluded from the evaluation process. If the last submitted application is declared as non-eligible or below the evaluation threshold upon evaluation, the other submitted applications will not be taken into consideration.
● The applicants must demonstrate that there is no risk of double funding. The fundamental principle underpinning the rules for public expenditure in the EU states that no costs for the same activity can be funded twice from the EU budget, as defined in Article 111 of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1605/2002 of 25 June 2002 on Financial Regulation. In the case of applications submitted by linked SMEs, all must clearly state the differences between them, including but not limited to, technical aspects, market strategy and team composition, so that no doubt remains that there is no risk of double funding. In order to properly assess these concerns INCiTiS-FOOD may assign all applications to the same set of evaluators and, should any doubt remain, exclude all applications. In case of applying consortia, appearance of an entity in multiple applying consortia will also be treated as a risk of double funding and consequently, all applications from consortia where this entity is present will automatically be discarded as ineligible.
For more information and application.