Consultancy: Facilitating Dialogue with Food Safety Policy Makers and Regulators in Kenya

Background

Food security and food safety are critical components in the agricultural sector in Africa. It is as crucial to produce safer food as it is increasing quantity. Small scale farmers often resort to using harmful pesticides in efforts to avoid crop loss and mitigate the damaging effects of pests and diseases. Local producers possess limited knowledge of best pest management practices in combating emerging plant health threats and the awareness of devastating implications of toxic chemicals on human health remains relatively low.

The CABI-led PlantwisePlus Programme thus aims to enable smallholder farmers to grow safer and higher quality foods through sustainable crop production. Through one of its objectives, the Programme will more specifically increase the supply of and demand for safer, higher quality and locally produced food in domestic markets.

It will seek to generate awareness of highly hazardous pesticides used in food production with the intent of increasing consumers’ demand for safer food. This will in turn motivate small scale farmers to change their production practices to meet required domestic market standards and will be supported to produce higher quality and safer food through facilitating access to low-risk products and practices.

Context of the assignment

The Plantwise Plus program will engage decision makers and relevant stakeholders in a discussion on issues related to food safety in Kenya, with a particular interest in pesticide contamination in order to ensure production and supply of safe food for domestic markets.

To fully engage key stakeholders in meaningful consultations, programme activities have focused on collating evidence of pesticide residues exceeding required levels in various value chains in Kenya. A stakeholder mapping exercise and food safety situation analysis was undertaken in Kenya as an initial step to identifying key stakeholders and current food safety initiatives across key value chains. The situational analysis also analyzed the major food safety/pesticide residue issues and the causal factors contributing to these issues through a literature survey including grey literature and key informant interviews.

Additionally, a consumer survey was conducted in Kenya to gain understanding of food safety knowledge, attitudes, and concerns among consumers. The results of the findings have been consolidated in a draft briefing paper with the aim of contributing to ongoing debate on food safety issues in the country.

CABI would therefore like to engage a Consultant to support stakeholder dialogue on food safety, contributing to the achievement of Activity 2.1.2: Engage policy makers including those involved in the regulation of bio pesticides/pesticides and monitoring maximum residue levels (MRLs) in dialogue concerning food safety issues.

The assignment will include the facilitation of a series of policy engagement meetings and finalizing, and dissemination of the briefing paper.

Key Deliverables:

1: Facilitate engagement meetings with stakeholders:

Facilitate a regulatory meeting with critical stakeholders with the aim to:

• present evidence of pesticide contamination and seek consensus and validation of the findings. This will be based on review of available study reports from CABI on evidence of MRLs, consumer surveys and pesticide risk situation analysis. The presentation will also be enhanced by the Consultant’s knowledge and engagement with food safety in particular pesticide risks in domestic markets
• gather additional information on the structure and content of the briefing paper

2: Develop food safety briefing paper with recommendations for policy and practice:

• Revise the current draft briefing paper (developed by CABI) in view of existing research evidence. The briefing paper should conform to the standards with clear problem description, presentation of evidence and recommendations for policy and practice
• Share the paper with relevant stakeholders and any other identified contacts for critique
• Finalize writing of the paper through a consultative write shop process
• Identify appropriate channels to disseminate the paper to the relevant stakeholder groups.

3: Facilitate stakeholder and policy dialogue

• Working together with a CABI and crucial stakeholders, define objectives of a high-level policy dialogue with regulatory authorities, farmer representatives, consumer associations/representatives, relevant private sector bodies including the agro-input industry and civil society representatives that will also include deliberations on the briefing paper for action
• Facilitate food safety stakeholder and policy dialogue workshop (to bring out core issues and recommendations)
• Finalize writing of workshop outputs in joint effort with the rapporteur.

Timelines:

The Consultant is expected to carry out these tasks for a maximum of 20 working days starting June 2022. After signing of contract, the Consultant together with CABI and other critical stakeholders will agree on dates for an initial stakeholder meeting and policy dialogue. In any case, these activities should be completed by September 30, 2022 including a final briefing paper with recommendations, and policy engagement workshop report.

Work plan

In submitting a bid for this assignment, each consultant is required to present an outline of their proposed approach to executing the assignment, relevant experiences, the fees, as well as an indicative workplan for 20 days from the date of contracting. Applicants should share at least 2 of their works that demonstrate experience in food policy.

ABOUT YOU

Knowledge & Skills

• Well experienced and knowledgeable in Food Safety regulations, agricultural research, and current national and global debates on food safety and in particular pesticide risks
• Good knowledge of policy analysis including food environment policies, with sound analytical, organizational and writing skills
• Experience in working for national or international organizations developing policies, Experience in private sector development would be an added advantage.
• Able to dialogue effectively with a wide range of senior stakeholders in public and private sectors
• Experience in translating and applying agricultural research evidence to identify solutions to problems