Background USAID is introducing the Middle East North Africa Investment Initiative (MENAII). MENAII will provide needed support to early stage businesses in order to create and sustain jobs, advance and develop the investment eco-system and encourage increased equity investment in early stage businesses. In order to achieve this, USAID grantee will partner with qualified members of the early stage private sector investment community, ranging from Incubators/Accelerators to Angels to Venture Capital in the Middle East region by providing: 1) Matching Investment Capital; 2) 100% Cash Collateralized Insurances, and; 3) Technical Assistance. These lines of effort will result in reflows, or program income, that will make MENAII a sustainable endeavor allowing for continued support to early stage businesses. Qualified partners will invest with an expectation of return on investment as a result from positive operational results and are expected to devote considerable effort to better governance, strategic guidance, market-linkages, and continuous mentoring. All of these factors produce a natural alignment of USAID's development goals and qualified partners' goals of sustainably and profitably growing businesses. Matching Grant Capital By matching private sector investment capital, MENAII will ease fundraising for qualified investors and increase calculated deployment of investment capital. The resulting reduction of private sector exposure will thereby contract the funding gap in early stage businesses. Additionally, qualified partners will be enabled to scale successful investment strategies and continue to invest in early stage businesses. 100% Cash Collateral Insurances MENAII will incentivize private sector investment by providing qualified partners with partial insurances on investments in early stage businesses. 100% Cash Collateralized Insurances will mitigate some of the risk associated with investing in early stage businesses and thereby encourage increased investment. Technical Assistance MENAII will provide technical assistance to improve both investors and investment recipients. Potential areas of assistance include: investment management; business development services, processes, marketing, branding; product design, research and development; and regulatory requirements. Source: https://goo.gl/pjTyqr