Country: Ethiopia
Closing date: 20 Jul 2018
Background
Founded in 2006, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is an African-led African-based organization that seeks to catalyze Agriculture Transformation in Africa. AGRA is focused on putting smallholder farmers at the center of the continent’s growing economy by transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle to survive into farming as a business that thrives. As the sector that employs the majority of Africa’s people, nearly all of them small-scale farmers, AGRA recognizes that developing smallholder agriculture into a productive, efficient, and sustainable system is essential to ensuring food security, lifting millions out of poverty, and driving equitable growth across the continent.
AGRA is rolling out a new 5-year strategy to catalyze and sustain an Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa to increase incomes and improve food security for 30 million farmers. Under this strategy, AGRA will deliver through an approach that simultaneously catalyzes change at farmer level, strengthens input and output market systems and puts government at the center to enable and champion private-sector-led agricultural growth at national level.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) would like to support the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MOAL) as part of the GOE-AGRA Cooperation Framework with an in-Kind Grant for the provision of technical assistance to enhance the capacity of the partners involved in the implementation of Participatory Small-scale Irrigation Development Programme (PASIDP II), the beneficiary communities as well as relevant actors in their value chains to engage in participatory planning towards the establishment of transparent, mutually beneficial (viable) commercial linkages, based on sound technical and financial analyses.
Objectives
The main objective of the TA is to ensure the delivery of strong programme results through the effective implementation of the critically required agribusiness components of PASIDP II while at the same time strengthening local capacity. The TA support seeks to provide critical programme implementation support to farmers and farmers' groups, including Water Users’ Associations, Cooperatives and/or Marketing Associations, and thus to minimize the substantial investment risks falling short of the Programme’s goal to engender thousands of small farmers with the skill to build thriving and sustained agribusiness enterprises.
The services include
o Quickly assess key site-specific market opportunities by identifying and engaging with interested off-takers;
o Assess technical and financial viability of market opportunities through data collection and analysis;
o Evaluate current production and marketing systems and identify opportunities for developing and/or enhancing businesses;
o Engage with farmers and their organizations to make the choices on the major crops to be cultivated and technologies to be applied based on an informed analysis of their options, which depend on market demand, technical capability, access to technologies and finance and other relevant factors;
o Support the development of business plans at household and scheme level, including strategies for strengthening the farmers cooperatives’ and Water Users Association’s organizational capacity and management;
o Guide cooperatives and marketing associations to be effectively managed, with emerging entrepreneurial leadership, as well as sound and transparent management;
o Support farmers’ groups with any other related technical issues as they emerge. AGRA now invites eligible consultants (firms) to indicate their interest in providing these services. Interested consultants must provide information indicating that they are qualified to perform the services (brochures, description of similar assignments, experience in similar conditions, general qualifications of key staff, and so forth). Consultants may associate to enhance their qualifications. A maximum of six (6) qualified firms shall be shortlisted to provide detailed technical and financial
How to apply:
The expression of interest shall not exceed 30 pages. The detailed terms of references can be found on https://bit.ly/2z5sDqi
Interested consultants may obtain further information at the email address provided below.
Expressions of interest must be sent to: procurement@agra.org by 5pm EAT 20th July, 2018.
