Basic principles for the management of the service funds

1. AfricaRice will establish a separate bank account at BOA for the management of the operational funds of the concerned GIZ projects. The account name will be “AfricaRice GIZ - Green Innovations Project” (GIP account). AfricaRice will assure that the signatories of the account are at the Benin station.
2. GIP account of AfricaRice at BOA (IBAN: BJ66BJ06 1010 3000 7260 3601 1991) will only be used for the payment of services that are delivered following the procedures of The RUN business model.
3. The GIP account will be operated following the principle of a revolving fund. For each project the total volume, the upper limit and the lower limit will be defined by the Project Coordinator in common agreement with the finance unit at HQ. The upper limit is the maximum amount that is available in the service fund for a specific project. Request for refilling can be made once the balance in the service fund for a specific project drops below its lower limit.
4. Requests for the payment of service providers will be made separately for each project. Payments can be made by check, ordinary bank transfer or MTN mobile money.
5. The head of the KM-unit of AfricaRice will sign a contract with MTN for the subscription to mobile money services and to install a Mobile Money account (online wallet) (62147000) to enable payments by BOA-Benin using MTN mobile money technology via Internet.
6. The upper limit of the Mobile Money account is 20.000.000 XOF. The lower limit is 10.000.000 XOF.

Procedures for the disbursement of funds and payment of services in Benin

The following procedure will be followed to assure timely payment of Task Agents upon delivery:

1. The Project Coordinator will submit a request for disbursement to replenish the GIP account to the Finance Unit at HQ for the various projects.
2. The Finance Unit at the Benin Station will inform the project coordinator once funds have arrived.
3. The head of the KM-unit will submit a request for disbursement to replenish the Mobile Money account to the Finance Unit at the Benin station. The upper limit of the Mobile Money account is 20 million XOF. A request for the refilling of the Mobile Money account may be submitted once the balance of the MTN wallet drops below 10 million XOF.
4. The Finance Unit of AfricaRice at the Benin station will transfer the request amount to the Mobile Money account (62147000) at BOA. The unit will exchange with the contact person (Eric 97 98 37 10) at BOA to assure immediate transfer. They will notify the head of the KM-unit once the Mobile Money account is credited.
5. The National Service Coordinator will organise and track progress of service delivery and submit project specific requests for payments to the Project Coordinator. The request will be submitted with the list of the amounts due for each Task Agent in Excel format. It will include the transfer charges.
6. The Quality Control Agent will verify if services were delivered according to defined quality criteria.
7. The Financial Control Agent will verify if the calculation of the amounts due is correct and financial records are up-to-date.
8. Once the request for payment is cleared by the Quality Control Agent and Financial Control Agent, the Project Coordinator will approve and submit the request with the individual claims and a table of amounts due to the Finance Unit of AfricaRice at the Benin station. He will copy the head of the KM-unit.
9. The head of the KM-unit will upload the list of payments due on the Mobile Money account and inform the Finance Unit once the operation is completed.
10. The Finance Unit will login into the Mobile Money account, verify, validate and trigger the bulk payment of Task Agents.
11. Once the balance of available funds in the BOA GIP account for a particular project has fallen below the defined lower limit (see next chapter for details), the Project Coordinator will submit a request for the disbursement of funds for replenishing the service fund to the Finance Unit at HQ. The request will include a detailed record of all payments made.
12. The Finance Unit at HQ will disburse the funds to the GIP account in order to replenish the service fund of the particular project.
13. In case that some payments were not successful, MTN will automatically transfer the remaining balance to the GIP account, according the terms defined in the annex to the contract with MTN.
14. MTN will provide monthly status reports indicating if one of the beneficiaries has not collected his money within a period of 30 days after payment. In such cases AfricaRice may request MTN to make the payment undone. The Project Coordinator will submit a corresponding request to the Financial Unit at the AfricaRice station in Benin to initiate the retransfer of the remaining funds to the GIZ account at BOA.
15. The Finance Unit in Benin and Abidjan will have access to the Mobile Money account and in order to view the status, to view and download the detailed records of all payments made.

Procedures for the disbursement of funds and payment of services in Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Togo

1. The National Service Coordinator will organise and track progress of service delivery and submit project specific requests for payments to the Project Coordinator.
2. The Quality Control Agent will verify if services were delivered according to defined quality criteria.
3. The Financial Control Agent will verify if the calculation of the amounts due is correct and financial records are up-to-date.
4. Once the request for payment is cleared by the Quality Control Agent and Financial Control Agent, the Project Coordinator will approve and submit the request for the transfer of the total amount due to the Finance Unit of AfricaRice at the Benin station. He will copy the head of the KM-unit.

Available funds and management parameters