World Bank Partnership Implementation Support Consultancy required at Mercy Corps

Program:                             Mercy Corps AgriFin: AgriFin Digital Farmer2

Mercy Corps AgriFin Digital Farmer 2 Program  

The challenges in agriculture in Africa, particularly for the smallholder farmers producing 80% of it’s’ food for consumption, are complex, and no single solution exists to reverse age-old issues around markets, infrastructure, poverty and exclusion. Digital solutions can provide relatively low-cost solutions that reach scale quickly, open new markets, and surpass the traditional brick-and-mortar approach to customer acquisition and the distribution and sales of products and services.  Over the past six years, AgriFin has worked both to build capacity of fintech and agtech innovators to scale and worked to broker partnerships for them onto larger digital platforms, typically hosted by banks, mobile network operators, large agricultural enterprises and government. Digital platforms are evolving as drivers for impact and viability in delivery of key services for agriculture and also for scale up of young, breakthrough technology providers.  Digital platforms can host multiple service providers, working to offer “end to end” services to drive transformation in agricultural markets and impact for smallholders, while decreasing risks and increasing revenue models for fintechs, agtechs and other market actors.

Mercy Corps’ AgriFin Digital Farmer( ADF II) program will work to reach five million smallholder farmers across Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Nigeria – 40% of whom are women – living on less than $2.00 per day, who will utilize DFS and/or DIS as a result of this project. In partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates and Bayer Foundations, ADF 2 seeks to support the expansion of digitally enabled services to 5 million smallholder farmers, delivered by growing ecosystems of diverse service providers and building farmer income, productivity and resilience across by 50% while reaching 40% women.  ADF II will continue to target farmers who work across a wide variety of crop, livestock and fish value chains, most of whom have diversified production systems growing multiple crops for both home consumption and sale. The program is expected to have positive impacts for farmers and direct partners providing services to farmers and ecosystem actors adopting learnings from program activities. Results and learning from this body of work can be found on the www.mercycorpsagrifin.org website.

Purpose of Engagement                                                                                                                                              

The purpose of this engagement is to engage a qualified consultant to support the ADF2 strategic partnership with the World Bank in Kenya with the goal of coordinating and supporting implementation of the associated work-plan and network of partners and developing a high impact partnership model potentially to be expanded to other AgriFin countries. A core aspect of this World Bank partnership is the capacity building for the Kenyan Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) following on multiple World Bank investments in the KALRO Big Data Platform, the World Bank Million Farmer Platform, digital content development and work on data sharing with a Pan-African Vision. AgriFin has also provided significant support to KALRO to develop a sustainable vision for its digital technology and data for agriculture, including the formulation of its Data Strategy and the joint development of the Sprout Open Content Platform for agricultural learning.  The vision of the World Bank and AgriFin is to support KALRO to firmly establish high caliber implementation capacity of its technology and data driven services, beginning with development of a dedicated business plan and roadmap to develop a dedicated social enterprise or special purpose vehicle to house the KALRO technology team and assets with a possible revenue model as the enterprise provides services on a Pan-African basis.  Another key element of the World Bank partnership will focus on support for the Million Farmer Platform (or DAT) implementation, ensuring that the DAT technology innovators optimize working relationships with county government and a range of scale partners, including banks and large-scale aggregators.  Finally, World Bank would like for AgriFin to support the growth of Kuza, a digital field force model they see as enabling a wide range of innovations.  Monitoring, evaluation and learning activities for this partnership will be led by MERAL director, Collins Marita, including agile impact studies. The consultant will also link into and support coordination across impact and learning activities across partnership stakeholders.

Scope of work

The consultants will engage with the AgriFin team and World Bank across the following key activities:

1. Working in full consultation with the AgriFin Technical Team lead to coordinate implementation of the AgriFin-World Bank partnership, based on framing documents, budgets, associated workplan and KPI. This partnership framing will be completed by the first quarter of 2022, with the consultant expected to join in the finalization of documentation with major partners;
2. Support activities to accelerate World Bank DAT programming, supporting the growth of participating cohort of technology innovators through their county government partnerships and new partnerships with funders and links to markets;
3. Coordinate efforts to build KALRO capacity and develop a dedicated special purpose vehicle for the KALRO digital and data services, including the Mercy Corps Sprout solution, working in support of the World Bank lead in this formulation with Government of Kenya;
4. Coordinate support to tech innovator KUZA as a DAT cohort member to expand through new partnerships with limited AgriFin and major World Bank scale funding;
5. Coordinate impact measurement and learning activities under this partnership with the MERAL director, Collins Marita;
6. Support learning and development around the AgriFin-World Bank partnership on an ongoing basis to inform evolution of the model and possible application in Ethiopia, Nigeria and other countries in future phases;
7. Other activities, as agreed with the AgriFin Technical Team lead and Program Director where applicable.

Deliverables

The consultant will work to produce the following deliverables, in close collaboration with the AgriFin Technical Team Lead or any designee assigned by the Program Director:

Consultant Skills and Experience                                                                     

The qualified consultant must demonstrate the highest professional skills in managing coordination across networks and project management, as well as excellent presentation and report writing skills. Ideally, the desired consultant would have significant experience in the field of digital technology, and/or agriculture and financial services. The consultant should have a clear track record for successful partnership development, collaborative work in teams and support for sustainable business models, as well as experience coordinating work across public and private sector organizations. The consultant must demonstrate a deep understanding relevant strategic objectives of this partnership that can accelerate outcomes.  MBA or equivalent Master’s degree in a related field plus at least five years of relevant work experience are preferred.

Timeline, Budget & Terms of Payment                                                                                                

The bulk of this project should be completed by October 2022 as agreed upon with AgriFin management, based on the consultant’s detailed proposal, with key deliverables under MCA due on a monthly basis to support invoicing.

Safeguarding & Ethics                                                                                                 

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times.

For full details on the consultancy and application see; https://www.mercycorpsagrifin.org/tenders/