Alliance For A Green Revolution In Africa (AGRA)- Request For Proposal From Consulting Firms For Value4her Programs Strategy & Digital Platform Value Proposition

DEADLINE: 30TH JUNE, 2021
ALLIANCE FOR A GREEN REVOLUTION IN AFRICA (AGRA)
RFP: VALUE4HER PROGRAMS STRATEGY & DIGITAL PLATFORM VALUE PROPOSITION
SYNOPSIS OF THE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (CONSULTING FIRM)

TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR VALUE4HER PROGRAM STRATEGY

BACKGROUND
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), www.agra.org is a farmer-centred, African-led, partnerships-driven institution that is working towards transforming smallholder farming from a solitary struggle to survive, to a business that thrives. In collaboration with its partners—including African governments, researchers, development partners, the private sector and civil society— AGRA’s work primarily focuses on smallholder farmers – men and women who typically cultivate staple crops on two hectares or less. AGRA has learned a lot from efforts during its first decade and is now recognized across the continent as a strong voice for African rural development, a prosperous agricultural economy, and for supporting thousands of small African businesses and millions of African families to improve agriculture as a way to ensure food security and improve their livelihoods.

AGRA’s goal is to catalyse an inclusive agricultural transformation on the African continent by increasing incomes and improving food security. With an initial focus on 11 countries, the goal is to improve the lives of over 30 million female and male farmers throughout Africa.

AGRA’S GENDER AND INCLUSIVENESS PROGRAM
AGRA recently revamped its gender and inclusion strategy, to be bold, ambitious, and more intentional in its approaches towards inclusive agriculture transformation. Specifically, AGRA’s gender and inclusion work aims to achieve three principle purposes:

Enhancing women’s equitable access to agricultural resources and to their share of benefits from agricultural transformation by addressing gendered barriers.

Enhancing employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth in agriculture through profitable business models, business development services and attractive technologies in agriculture.

Reinforcing public policies, strategies, and investments to enhance equity of opportunities in agriculture while boosting accountability and shared prosperity for disadvantaged groups.

AGRA works with governments, private sector, and development partners, while investing in catalytic interventions that will lead to systemic change in agriculture and market systems.

AGRA’s VALUE4HER Program
VALUE4HER is AGRA’s continental program, aimed at strengthening women’s agribusinesses enterprises and enhancing their voices and advocacy across Africa. The program initially developed under CTA – The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation, then transferred to AGRA, under a mutual agreement, at the close of CTA’s mandate.

The VALUE4HER program is powered by VALUE4HERConnect, Africa’s first Women in Agribusiness digital marketplace. VALUE4HERConnect offers integrated business solutions to women owned/led companies, to enable them to build visibility, business networks and collective capital across the continent, while facilitating easier connections with buyers, financiers and other service providers. The platform connects women agribusinesses from across Africa together with one another and with key markets actors with the aim to increase the performance of women’s agribusinesses through market access, financial access, as well as improved knowledge and skills acquisition, The tools of networking, mentorship and improved capacity building lead agribusinesses towards increased growth. VALUE4HERConnect leverages the power of digital tools to bridge structural and gendered gaps in access to business resources, deliver real time information, offer relevant knowledge, and amplify women’s voices through advocacy.  As a first of its kind for women in agribusiness in Africa, the digital intelligence platform offers a revolutionary approach to addressing systemic market barriers that affect the performance of women led agribusinesses.

AGRA seeks to grow the VALUE4HER program and the digital marketplace, to be a one- stop-shop for women agripreneurs’ integrated business growth needs.

SCOPE OF WORK
AGRA seeks the services of a consultancy firm, to consolidate lessons and prepare the VALUE4HER program, including the digital platform, for scale. The scope of work involves developing the VALUE4HER program strategy and results framework, reviewing and refining the platforms’ value proposition and services to members, creating modalities for membership and partnerships, and defining pathways towards sustainability of services, amongst series of other anticipated improvements. The consulting firm will play a key role in defining VALUE4HER program and platform’s strategic niche on the continent, in support of women agribusiness.

Due to the integrated nature of the anticipated results (both programmatic and digital services), AGRA seeks the services of a company that brings on board a diverse range of skills and expertise, including women’s economic empowerment, agribusiness development, designing and executing client oriented integrated digital business solutions and digital results tracking amongst others.

The firm, under the guidance of AGRAs Head of Gender and Inclusiveness, will work closely with internal and external stakeholders, including women agripreneur networks and strategic partners in the execution of this assignment.

The consultancy tasks and expected outputs are listed below:
(1) Develop the VALUE4HER program strategy and anticipated results, clearly highlighting the role played by VALUE4HERConnect platform in catalysing business growth and facilitating access to integrated digital business solutions, networks, voice and advocacy for women in agribusiness.

(2) Refine the VALUE4HERConnect platform, including its integrated digital business solution offerings and networking needs.

(a) Conduct an evaluation of VALUE4HERConnect, its current offerings, user engagement and experiences, platform layout/ease of use, digital infrastructure potential for growth, monitoring framework; identify gaps between strategic intentions and current functionalities/offer/use/value proposition.

(b) Develop an evaluation report, including key recommendations for improvements/synergies/partnerships with other online resources and/or services- to be discussed with main stakeholders (women members, private sector partners and institutional partners)

(c) Based on evaluation recommendations and stakeholder consultations, refine the overall value proposition for the platform, detailing the offer for each group of users/stakeholders

(d) Based on the overall value proposition, refine each pillar value proposition, design process flow and engagement guide, based on the purpose of each pillar. The pillars are:

• Women2Women pillar
• Women2Market pillar
• Women2Finance pillar
• Women2KnowHow pillar
• Women2Technology pillar

(3) Based on each pillar’s value proposition, develop a facilitation guide (digitized) for platform managers, to execute online matching services on women2women networking, women2market, women2finance, women2technology and women2knowhow facilitation Based on the information needs of each category of users, refine each pillar’s supporting information packages on the platform, develop a methodology for updating of crucial information packages core to the Platforms Value Proposition.

(4) Develop membership and partnership guide, including suitable membership (across business types/sizes/geographies) and partnership (categories) data intake filters and registers, that also ensures business classification, data integrity and data privacy
Develop the platform’s results framework and refine the digital monitoring system and analytics data points, that integrates with and feeds into the AGRA’s M&E Results Framework.

(a) Develop a clear results framework and metrics for performance measurement of the platform, and institute a digital tracker and reporting of key performance indicators.

(b) Develop a system for periodic surveys to establish user feedback on relevance and value of content provided on the platform.

(c) Develop required integrations between the VALUE4HER platform and AGRA’s M&E Results Framework, including synchronisation of high-level data points for corporate reporting.

DELIVERABLES
This assignment will be for an initial period of six months, with a possibility of renewal for another six months upon successful execution of the tasks, achievement of desired results and availability of financial resources.

The consulting firm is expected to deliver the following outputs:

Output 1: A max 30-page inception report, detailing among others the understanding of the assignment, methodology to be used, detailed outputs and a workplan, to be approved by Head of gender and inclusiveness.

Output 2:  A max 20-page program strategy for VALUE4HER, clearly showing desired results and the role/position of the VALUE4HER platform in delivering the results.

Output 3: A detailed evaluation pack/ toolkit for VALUE4HER platform, evaluation conducted with selected members and partners, to be discussed and approved

Output 4: A max 20-page evaluation report of the digital platform, with clear recommendations on improvements needed, including areas where synergies or partnerships would be of value, discussed and agreed with AGRA and partners

Output 5: A max 20-page VALUE4HER overall and each pillar value proposition and offerings and results framework, agreed and approved.

Output 6: A max 5-page Value proposition report, translated also to process flow for each pillar, this is agreed and approved.

Output 7: Refined information packages outline, based on needs identified with users, and a methodology for continuous updating of information packages, including relevant digital knowledge resources to partner with

Output 8: A max 3-page report and Digital process guide for match making services as per each pillar.

Output 9: a 5-page Membership and Partnership guide, including business classification clusters and data entry filters and registers, across business and partnership categories.

Output 10: A report detailing performance indicators and analytics and Digital results tracking system, to be refined based on usage and link with AGRA’s M &E.

Output 11: A report on assessment of digital infrastructure currently in use, and propose relevant improvements or upgrades

DESIRED CONSULTANCY FIRM
Due to the integrated nature of the deliverables of this assignment (both programmatic and digital services), AGRA seeks the services of a company that brings on board a diverse mix of skills and expertise, ranging from designing and executing client oriented integrated digital business solutions/system development, gender and women’s economic empowerment, private sector led agribusiness growth and development and digital M &E system and analytics amongst others.

THE CONSULTANCY TEAM MUST THEREFORE HAVE QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS
(a) Academic qualification of Gender in Agriculture, Gender Economics, Agriculture Economics, Agri-business management, Development economics, Digital Agriculture, Computer science or related field.

(b) Expertise and proficiency in systems design, designing and executing Client oriented digital integrated business solutions and services, development of computer, web and mobile devices-based applications

(c) Experience in Designing program strategy and value-oriented program design

(d) Experiences developing digital solutions to address systemic market failures, gender and socio-economic barriers.

(e) The firms’ offer must demonstrate understanding of gender and needs of women agripreneurs, women’s enterprise development/agri-food trade for women, agri-market actors and agri-financing actors and ecosystem

(f) Agility and flexibility to adapt offerings and course of action for this highly innovative assignment

(g) Fluency in English. French is an added advantage

EVALUATION CRITERIA
(1) Company profile and Organizational capacity – 15%

(2) Brief description of the understanding of the assignment – 15%

– Technical understanding and operational competency in agriculture development and women empowerment projects with a focus on digital innovations

(3) Experience in carrying out similar assignments – 30%

– Detailed reference list indicating the scope and magnitude of similar assignments in the last 3 to 5 years.

– Experience in leading design and execution of client oriented intergrated digital solutions, stakeholder engagements and alliance building, working with private sector market actors and financing institutions, and women SMEs, particularly in Africa

– Sufficient experience in front-end administration of digital tools and adequate understanding of ethical personal data processing

(4) Key personnel – 40%

– Provide CV’s of at least three (3) key personnel that demonstrate expertise and knowledge in agriculture and womens economic empowerment strategy and programming, client oriented digital solutions, amongst others-35%

– French is an added advantage -5%

APPLICATION SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The proposal should include:

(A) Technical Proposal
(A) Detailed Curriculum Vitae of the key personnel

(B) Detailed reference list indicating the scope and magnitude of similar assignments carried out

(C) Demonstrate possession of qualification and experience required

(D) Provide methodology, work plan and understanding of the assignment

(B) Financial Proposal
(1) The firm shall provide a financial proposal as per the template provided under annex 1.

(2) The firm may also propose additional pricing options or modalities for consideration.

(3) Price must be quoted in US Dollars (USD)

(4) Prices should be inclusive of all applicable taxes.

(5) If the financial proposal is silent on taxes, AGRA shall assume that these are inclusive.

(6) Reimbursable costs if applicable shall be quoted separately.

(7)  The financial proposal shall be submitted separately from the technical proposal and should be password protected. Only the firm meeting the minimum technical score (75% and above) shall be requested for the password to their financial proposal

GUIDELINES FOR PREPARATIONS AND SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS
(a) The proposals SHALL be submitted to procurement@agra.org by deadline indicated in the synopsis

(b) The proposal and ALL Attachments submitted via email SHALL NOT exceed 10MB

(c) VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for a period of 90 days from the date of bid closure.

(d) Financial proposal shall be sent as a separate attachment and MUST be password protected.

(e) Proposal must be provided in English Language