The Global Innovation Fund (GIF) has announced a follow-on “Transition to Scale” grant to Mafisa, a Zambian livestock services organisation working with traditional cattle farmers in Western Province. GIF says the money will strengthen regional livestock processing capacity and build a market aggregation model that connects smallholder cattle farmers in Western Zambia to formal markets.

GIF’s announcement is dated 10 November 2026. It states no grant amount and no agreement date. GIF’s Mafisa investment profile, which is undated, describes the follow-on as a “Test and Transition” grant made “in October 2026”. StartupNews has not established the signing date or resolved the difference in wording.

GIF’s argument is that once herds improve, the bottleneck is selling them. Mafisa’s animal health, rangeland and water services have improved herd health, the release says, but “productivity alone cannot generate sustained and predictable incomes without reliable, high-volume offtake.” GIF says livestock contributes roughly 42% of Zambia’s agricultural GDP, and that in Western Province, remoteness, weak infrastructure and fragmented markets have pushed pastoralists into distress sales.

These figures are company-reported, restated by GIF, and not independently verified by StartupNews. GIF says Mafisa has reached about 4,000 farmers and 79,000 cattle across 400,000 hectares. A 2025 internal survey of 1,212 participating farmers reported a 52% reduction in herd mortality and calving rates rising from 39% to 50%.

GIF points to a sales pilot. It says Mafisa ran an aggregated sales model with a commercial beef processor, and that participating farmers doubled their average cattle sale prices, “mostly attributable to improved cattle quality.” GIF’s profile adds that 73 farmers sold 118 cattle through two buying centres.

Charlotte Scott, Mafisa’s founder and chief executive, said: “Smallholder cattle farmers in Western Zambia manage valuable assets, but without market access, that value remains trapped.”

The new grant builds on an initial partnership that GIF says began in 2024. GIF announced a $500,000 grant to Mafisa in January 2025. In a March 2026 LinkedIn post, GIF said that early backing helped Mafisa unlock an additional $2.5 million from Rippleworks. StartupNews has not verified that figure.

Carbon finance also features in the model. ZayoHub, which says it registered as a Zambian NGO in 2018 and calls Mafisa its livestock programme, says a multi-decade contract for pre-financing and sales of carbon offset credits was signed in 2023. A Cartier Philanthropy partner page describes a 40-year agreement with a single buyer for future carbon credits. A Verra registry entry, as republished by the Carbon.Supply aggregator, lists the grazing project as under validation with no credits issued; StartupNews did not open the Verra registry page directly.

GIF calls Mafisa a non-profit. Mafisa’s website does not state its legal form in the pages reviewed, and this article does not establish whether the programme is legally separate from ZayoHub.

Unresolved: the grant size and terms, the signing date, and independent verification of the herd and price figures. StartupNews found no independent press coverage of the grant in the searches run.

Sources

TopicsZambia Livestock Agriculture Grants

StartupNews Africa · More from this byline →