Consultancy for Organizational Assessment and Profiling of Farmer Organizations working with AGRA’s Soil Health Program

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) mission is to trigger a uniquely African Green Revolution that transforms agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system to assure food security and lift millions out of poverty.

AGRA’s main goals by 2020 are to:

i) Reduce food insecurity by 50 percent in at least 20 countries

iii) Put at least 15 countries on track towards attaining and sustaining a uniquely African Green Revolution.

Soil Health Program: AGRA’s Africa Soil Health Program (SHP) was set up in early 2008 to improve smallholder farmer (SHFs) productivity, through increasing access to locally appropriate soil nutrients and promoting integrated soil fertility management.

i) To increase farmers’ financial and physical access to locally appropriate soil nutrients and fertilizers;

ii) To create sustainable, locally effective systems for disseminating promising interventions;

iii) To support development of national policy environment for investment in fertilizer & integrated soil fertility management practices; and

iv) To strengthen capacity of national institutions to deliver

Farmer Organization Support Centre in Africa: AGRA’s Farmer Organization Support Centre in Africa (FOSCA) was established in 2010 to engage and build the capacity of Farmer Organizations (FOs) by linking them to service providers that would provide demand-driven services including: the technical, managerial and institutional needs of a wide range of FOs.

The main objectives of FOSCA are to:

i) Engage FOs to improve their ability to respond to members needs for their specifically smallholders;

ii) Increase and improve the supply of services available to FOs;

iii) Link FOs with relevant and effective services; and

iv) Build knowledge base to improve services to FOs and inform policy decisions

Objectives of the Consultancy:

In order to reach more SHFs and for program delivery efficiency, AGRA programs including SHP often work with FOs especially at the community level which are directly involved in organizing and offering services to members.

The SHP is currently working with over 2600 farmer based organizations in 13 countries while FOSCA is working towards strengthening the capacity of FOs in all AGRA countries.

In its interaction and partnering with the FOs, SHP recognizes some weaknesses which if addressed, would enhance their service offering to their members who are SHFs. This would enable FOs to be better enablers for SHFs in accessing vital services including inputs and improved production technology such as ISFM.

It is against this backdrop that both SHP and FOSCA would like to collaborate in undertaking a
capacity assessment and profiling of the FOs that SHP is working with through the services of a
consultant.

The objective of this assignment is to undertake an assessment and generate profiles that AGRA programs, especially SHP and FOSCA, would use to strengthen the capacity of FOs in AGRA target countries.

The consultant will thus be expected to undertake an in-depth capacity assessment that will enable him/her to provide AGRA with profiles of the assessed FOs and recommendations of how to address their capacity weaknesses and options that would be considered for enhancing their capacity.

Scope of Work

This undertaking will be conducted in all the countries where SHP is working with FOs (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia) and would mainly fulfill the following:

a) Overall capacity assessment of FOs to deliver services to their members (smallholder farmers)

b) An assessment of the challenges faced by the FOs

c) An assessment of what makes FOs effective or not in delivering services to their farmers

d) Determine who else besides AGRA is providing support to these FOs currently and what the collaboration mechanisms are.

e) Establish if there are other potential interested support providers (such as NGOs, private sector and development agencies, input suppliers, produce buyers etc.) that SHP and FOSCA would partner with.

f) Provide practical recommendations for addressing the challenges identified and for enhancing efficiency of the profiled FOs

Duration of the Assignment: The consultancy is planned for a maximum period of Forty (45) calendar days starting from September, 2013.

Expected Deliverables: A comprehensive database for profiled FOs and a Profiling Report
 

Proposal Submission

Taking into account the TOR, the consultant should submit a 5-page proposal and CVs of the principal consultant and two key team members. Proposals shall be submitted in two parts, i.e. Technical and Financial. The technical proposal should include the firm’s profile detailing the relevant experiences, CVs of the proposed team members and the methodology to be used.

The financial proposal should indicate a detailed budget and the total cost of the study including taxes.

Interested consultants (firms) are asked to submit their proposals by close of business 30 August 2013 at 17.00 Hours Nairobi time to the following email address: SHProjects@agra.org to get the Full

Terms of Reference for this assignment are accessible on: www.agra.org