Sign Nothing Before The Letter

Antrag vor Beginn der Maßnahme. Seven words in a German programme text, and the seven that decide whether the money ever arrives. The programme is called Beratungsgutscheine Afrika. It is run by BAFA for the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, and it pays 85 per cent of what an external consultant charges a German company to work out an African market entry. Up to 15 Beratertage per voucher. Up to 16,524 euro per voucher. Three vouchers per company per year, so 49,572 euro. The rule is about order, not paperwork. The application goes in first. The Zuwendungsbescheid comes back. Only then may a contract be signed and a single hour billed. I have watched a company lose the whole amount on this. A consultant is engaged in May because the market will not wait. The application goes in during June. The invoice carries the date 14 May. The voucher is approved and then withdrawn, and the 15 per cent that was supposed to be the company's only cost turns into 100 per cent of the bill. The probability that an auditor reads the date on the consultant's first invoice is not zero. Most applicants price it at zero, which is why the date is the first thing read. Nothing in the twelve months before approval is allowed. No kick-off call. No field visit. No market study bought early because it was briefly on offer.

It buys external consulting hours. Reports, studies, market analysis, business-case arithmetic, partner search, customs and import rules, logistics, certification, legal and financing advice, and the work of founding a branch. It does not buy anything with a serial number. No sensor kit. No software build. No pilot plant. No internal salary, not even the person whose job is managing the consultant, because internal coordination was never eligible. The split is 85 to 15. The company carries 15 per cent of an approved invoice and BAFA pays the remainder, so 15 per cent is the only part that has to exist in the company's own budget line. What gets approved is a short business case for advice. Not a project plan wearing a voucher's clothes.

The daily rate is capped by topic, and the cap is not a negotiating position. Market analysis, market research, local contacts, customs, logistics and transport sit at 864 euro a day. Business-case calculation, certification and building a sales structure sit at 1,080. Financing, financing negotiations, founding a branch and legal questions sit at 1,296. Fifteen days at 864 is 12,960 euro of eligible cost, and 85 per cent of that is 11,016. Fifteen days at 1,296 is 19,440 euro, and 85 per cent of that is 16,524 — the ceiling, hit exactly. Same fifteen days. Same consultant. Same country. A gap of 5,508 euro, decided by which catalogue topic each day is filed under. Twelve and a half days at the top rate reaches the ceiling that fifteen days at the bottom rate never touches. The two and a half days left over are not wasted. They are the reason to spend an afternoon deciding what the work actually is.

The applicant has to be a legally independent company with a Betriebsstätte or a Niederlassung in Germany. A branch counts. A registered office in Spain or the United Kingdom does not, and no amount of good writing changes it. The size test is wider than most founders assume. Under 500 employees, counted with affiliated and partner companies. Annual turnover of 100 million euro or less, counted the same way. That is double the usual European threshold on headcount and on revenue, so mid-sized groups qualify far more often than their own finance department believes. Every African state is eligible. The programme text carries no country list and no sector list. It is branchenunabhängig, open to any industry. What is not open is the consultant. The adviser has to sit on the BAFA list of approved consulting firms at the moment the contract is signed. Not afterwards. A cheaper favourite is a lost voucher. I have deployed 210 energy systems across Africa and Asia, and the pattern has held in every market I have worked. The technical answer is never the expensive part. The local answer is, and it is the one nobody can produce from a desk in Germany.

The programme does not ask what you needed. It asks when you asked.

Two pages. That is the entire Vorhabensbeschreibung, and the evaluator expects a clear business case for advice inside it. Six blocks, in this order. The company in two sentences, including the honest admission that there is no African experience yet. The target country and why that market now. What the company intends to achieve there, konkret. The consulting need, topic by topic, with days against each one. What will exist when the consultant stops: a market study, a partner list, a business case. And the cost and financing table. That last table decides the arithmetic. Fifteen days, split by topic, at the correct cap per topic, summed to an eligible total, 85 per cent of it requested, 15 per cent carried by the company. A ten-page project plan is not a stronger version of a two-page voucher request. It is a weaker one.

The money does not move when the voucher is approved. It moves when the Verwendungsnachweis is accepted: the consultant's invoice, the evidence of what was delivered, and the arithmetic reconciled against the plan. Two things sit in front of that. De-minimis headroom, which is 300,000 euro of cumulative state aid across a rolling three years per company, confirmed by Accounting before the application rather than after it. And the fact that the entitlement is per company per year, so three applications can cover three countries or three phases of one market entry. All of it repeats. Next year opens three more vouchers. Same company, same German address, 49,572 euro a year, for as long as the market entry stays unfinished. The order is the programme. Apply. Wait. Then hire, then invoice.