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About Tanager
Tanager, an ACDI/VOCA affiliate, is an international nonprofit that brings people together at the table, on the ground, and across supply chains to co-create economic and social opportunities that change lives. Working closely with our partners, we align interests to expand market access and unlock the full potential of shared market opportunities that result in reliable supply chains, stable incomes, healthy families, and resilient communities. Established in 1993, we work with the ACDI/VOCA family of companies to make agriculture work better for people. We offer a focused and diligent team of locally based experts and international advisors who work with our partners to reach common goals.
For more information, please visit www.tanagerintl.org.
Project Overview
The Impacting Gender & Nutrition through Innovative Technical Exchange in Agriculture (IGNITE) mechanism is a five-year investment funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by Tanager to improve household nutrition and women’s empowerment by strengthening African institutions’ ability to integrate nutrition and gender into their way of doing business and their agriculture interventions.
IGNITE is supporting its clients through client decision focused research to test and learn how the design and implementation models within their agricultural programming is impacting on women’s empowerment, gender equality and improving nutrition. IGNITE has also engaged four Local Service Providers (LSPs) based in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Ethiopia as part of its sustainability to build the capacity of these organisation and work with these LSPs to co-deliver technical assistance to our clients across the four countries.
About the IGNITE Local Service Providers (LSPs)
To broaden and deepen our support in these four countries and as a strategy to ensure technical assistance (TA) provision is sustained beyond the program lifecycle, Tanager seeks to cultivate a network of local service providers (LSPs) and has identified and engaged four of such institutions based in the four project implementation countries to co-deliver IGNITE TA services to clients in their respective countries. For the past 1 year, Tanager has built the technical capacity of the LSPs in gender and nutrition integration in Agriculture, through trainer of trainers approach, coaching and mentorship which has led to LSPs delivering services to clients including trainings and research. By July 2022, 4% of client service provision was offered by the LSPs either as lead or alongside the IGNITE technical experts. The program targets to increase this engagement to over 30% in the next 1 year.
Assignment Overview
Tanager seeks to engage a consultancy firm consisting of a multidisciplinary team to undertake a business service management capability assessment of these LSPs to identify areas that may require capacity strengthening for designing a tailormade capacity development plan for each LSP towards the above goal.
Three of the IGNITE LSPs are NGOs, and one is a consultancy firm offering advisory services. The four LSPs are endowed with different levels of expert experience, resources, and funding structures. IGNITE recognizes that the success of increasing and maintaining the LSPs service provision, will call for different engagement arrangement with Tanager as well as a reliable governance structure of the institution in terms of resources, processes, and structure.
Scope of Work
The overall objective of the assignment is to assess the business service management capability of the four LSPs and develop a capacity development plan for their enhanced management and service provision to IGNITE clients and other African agricultural Institutions on gender and nutrition integration. It is hoped that this will be done by drawing lessons from the external landscape of Business Development Service (BDS) or agricultural technical service provision that will provide the building blocks or parameters against which the assessment shall be based.
The assessment therefore envisions to take a three-phase approach comprising of:
Phase 1: A qualitative market scan of existing models of service provision in each country
- A quick market scan of existing institutions providing technical advisory services in gender and nutrition within the agriculture sector either to private sector companies, governments or NGOs in each of the four countries. Different approaches to the scan can be explored, for instance the business canvas model amongst others. This scan should yield a prototype/approach for TA delivery by different service providers (private sector, NGOs etc)
Phase 2: An assessment of each LSPs capability to develop, deliver and manage technical assistance services
- An assessment of each LSP on their current approach/model and capacity to develop, deliver and manage gender and nutrition TA services. This assessment should yield to identification of existing capacity, gaps and opportunities for capacity strengthening based on the different models/prototypes identified in the market scan.
Phase 3: Development of capacity improvement plans for each LSP.
- Provide a proposed capacity development plan for each LSP based on their respective assessment.
- Conduct an in-country validation meeting with each LSP to share findings from their institutional assessment.
- Present final capacity development plans tailored for each LSP
Deliverables
- Inception report that elaborates methodology to be used, tools for assessment, timelines, etc.
- Comprehensive analysis of the existing technical assistance models in agriculture sector (with a focus of gender and/or nutrition) in the four countries
- Tools for capacity assessment based on the defined models
- Individual reports for the 4 LSPs of their analysis with a proposed capacity development plan
- Final report with agreed capacity development plan incorporating input from the validation
Qualifications
This assignment is expected to be undertaken by a consultancy firm consisting of a multidisciplinary team with the following qualifications.
- Combined knowledgeable multi-disciplinary team with competencies and at least 5 years of experience in the following, business development, technical service provision within agriculture sector preferably with gender and/or nutrition experience, organizational development, product development, marketing, financial management, relationship management
- The assignment team leader with extensive and varied knowledge and knowledge in business development services (BDS) gained in the private and public institutions within the agricultural sector
- An extensive demonstrable professional experience in conducting an institutional assessment for both NGOs and private sector by the firm
- Excellent analytical, written and verbal communication skills, and excellent presentation skills.
Additional Qualifications
- Combined experience in the institutional governance sector in the four countries
- Fluency in English required and at least one of the team members should have excellent fluency in French.
- A set of team members based in at least 2 of these countries will be an added advantage.
Note: All inquiries and requests for information regarding this RFP must be submitted by email to the following email kenyaprocurement@tanagerintl.org no later than the question/inquiry submission deadline on the cover page of this RFP.
Request for Proposal (PDF Version)