About Us
About The Embassy of Switzerland
The Government of Switzerland has supported bilateral and regional projects in Tanzania since the early 1960s. In 1981, Tanzania became a priority country for official Swiss development assistance. The Swiss Cooperation Programme in Tanzania 2021 - 2025 aims to empower young people, especially poor young women, to advance socially and economically through three cross-sectoral outcomes: (i) strengthening state institutions, (ii) promoting civic space and (iii) improving youth livelihoods.
Switzerland’s Interest
Switzerland is committed to supporting innovative private-sector initiatives that facilitate the creation of decent jobs and foster a thriving ecosystem for High Impact Organizations (HIOs). By championing business-led solutions, Switzerland seeks to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of its collaboration with Tanzania. Key efforts include:
Catalyzing Impact-Driven Investments
Introducing Swiss-pioneered Impact-Linked Finance instruments to attract both private and public investment in Tanzanian enterprises.
Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Supporting incubation and acceleration programs for ecosystem enablers in Tanzania.
Collaborating with organizations like the Tanzanian Startup Association to create a supportive regulatory and operational environment for SMEs.
Empowering Youth and Women
Promoting initiatives that enhance economic opportunities for young people and women as entrepreneurs, employees, suppliers, and consumers.
By fostering innovation and supporting impactful businesses, Switzerland aims to drive economic growth while improving the living standards of Tanzanians, particularly youth and women.
Our Projects
Below are current innovation and impact financing projects supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in Tanzania.
A $10million project aimed at capitalizing on the ubiquity of SMEs and the innovative potential of Tanzania’s young population (over 60% are under 25 and 19% between 15 - 24 years). The project has two components:
1. The gender principal Daraja Impact Fund ($8million), an impact fund that invests catalytic capital to social enterprises using Impact Linked Finance instruments and technical assistance support to High Impact Organizations in Tanzania. The sector agnostic catalytic fund operates from 2023 – 2027 and is managed by impact advisors SEAF and AlphaMundi Foundation.
2. The second component is supporting a conducive environment of Tanzania for impact enterprises in order to foster coordination and complementarity of the different stakeholders’ initiatives. By supporting the development of acts and policies like the Startup Policy, stakeholder coordination towards an inclusive, gender sensitive, holistic and systematic support to impact enterprises. For more information, please click here
The ILFF provides catalytic and flexible finance to HIOs in their acceleration and growth stage who are focused on creating a strong positive impact including for vulnerable communities, and directly rewards these HIOs for positive outcomes generated through their business activities. Managed by facility managers, the ILFF channels financial resources to HIOs through non-repayable and repayable financial instruments that link financial terms to realized outcomes, ensuring that funding flows are directly tied to measurable and sustained impact.
These instruments include Social Impact Incentives (see also SIINC), impact-linked loans, impact-linked payments, impact-linked (repayable) grants, and other financial innovations with rewards linked to achieving positive outcomes. Within ILFF, there are several funding windows, including a regional one for Eastern and Southern Africa ("ILF ESA I" 2020-2025) and a specific one for Tanzania ("ILF ESA II" 2023-2027), The latter provides catalytic funding with an expanded focus on climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience, i.e. rewarding organizations for achieving environmental and social outcomes, including climate-related targets. For more information, please click here.
Ifakara Innovation Hub (IIH) is a community of inspiration, ideation, and collaboration for solution development with a focus on health and rural livelihoods. IIH extends the innovation ecosystem to rural Tanzania by realistically considering the trade-offs between knowledge exploration, i.e. research and exploitation of technological innovations (product development and testing), and the establishment of innovations that are compatible with existing social, economic, and governance systems. For more information, please click here.
The AfroGreen ClimAccelerator aims to foster innovative and sustainable solutions that contribute to the ecosystem’s efforts to address the impacts and risks of climate change. It is the successor of the Westerwelle Startup Haus Arusha pilot program for ten women-led early-stage green startups that are developing sustainable solutions and growing their markets through capacity building. With Cohort 2, The Embassy supported 20 early-stage HIOs from Tanzania working on business ideas that take climate change into account. For more information, please click here.
