The innovation profiling standard for a EUR 165M agricultural fund

The challenge

GIZ's i4Ag fund supports 40 agricultural innovations across 32 countries. It needed a rigorous, reusable way to profile that portfolio: one that presents innovations convincingly to outside funders and lets GIZ organise and compare them internally.

What we did

• Reviewed global innovation profiling frameworks (CGIAR IPSR, FAO ATIO, IRIS+ and the SDGs) to ground the structure in how funders actually make decisions.
• Designed a modular profile template covering impact evidence, scaling potential, business model, cost–benefit indicators, risk and due diligence, built to give funders a credible first impression even where project data is thin.
• Piloted the template on live i4Ag innovations, including cassava, cotton and post-harvest loss work in the Philippines, refining it through rounds of GIZ feedback.
• Added scalability assessments, giving GIZ a documented method for judging scale-readiness.
• Produced pitch decks for individual innovations for direct funder engagement.
• Built a training-of-trainers framework so the SCALE team can lead future profiling internally, and a standalone methodology document for presenting the approach to other GIZ programmes.

Results

• GIZ adopted the template as its profiling standard for the i4Ag fund.
• GIZ raised the contract ceiling by 43%, exercised the full contract option and extended the term by ten months, to December 2026.
• The SCALE team is presenting the methodology to other GIZ programmes.