DEADLINE: 30TH MAY, 2022
GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR IMPROVED NUTRITION (GAIN)
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH TO IMPROVE FORTIFICATION QUALITY IN NIGERIA
ABOUT GAIN
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the UN in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Working with both governments and businesses, we aim to transform food systems so that they deliver more nutritious food for all people.
At GAIN, we believe that everyone in the world should have access to nutritious and safe food. We work to understand and deliver specific solutions to the daily challenge of food insecurity faced by poor people. By understanding that there is no “one-size-fits-all” model, we develop alliances and build tailored programmes, using a variety of flexible models and approaches.
We build alliances between governments, local and global businesses, and civil society to deliver sustainable improvements at scale. We are part of a global network of partners working together to create sustainable solutions to malnutrition. Through alliances, we provide technical, financial and policy support to key participants in the food system. We use specific learning, evidence of impact, and results of projects and programmes to shape and influence the actions of others.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, GAIN has representative offices in Denmark, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, we have country offices in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Tanzania. Programmes and projects are carried out in a variety of other countries, particularly in Africa and Asia.
BACKGROUND
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) and will be the administrative lead organisation for this RFP.
The purpose of this RFP is to engage services of a Service Provider to design and conduct implementation research activities to test and refine the digitization theory of change, with particular focus on the digitization and gender equity efforts, in Bangladesh, Nigeria and India as part of GAIN’s work on digitizing fortification quality and strengthening enabling environments.
DIGITIZING FORTIFICATION QUALITY AND STRENGTHENING ENABLING ENVIRONMENTS
Fortification programs today suffer from a lack of fortification quality across almost all food vehicles due to weak government enforcement mechanisms that are a result of poor incentives, lack of trained personnel, and limited resources. Without the enforcement that could level the playing field, mills/refiners are not held accountable to fortify to government standards – and many do not fortify at all, reducing effective coverage and diminishing the contribution fortification can have on micronutrient intakes and disease prevention. To date, quality improvements in fortification have largely been achieved through accreditation services (i.e., premix) and traditional capacity building of industry, labs, and government regulators by international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).These efforts have been important, but they have failed to build sustainable, cost-effective systems, as they continue to rely heavily on resource-constrained government enforcement programs for monitoring and on international donors to support the work of the NGOs.
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), GAIN aims to lead the co-creation, design, test and scale up with partners of a digital, field-friendly, replicable solution that enables mills and regulators to produce and access traceable data on food fortification quality while also supporting data quality, knowledge management, technical assistance, and standards for large-scale food fortification (LSFF).
The vision of this partnership is developing a country-owned digital, field-friendly systems solution that enables mills and authorities to generate, govern, share, and utilize safely accurate and traceable data on food fortification quality within factories and markets, including customs.
This includes designing and systemically utilizing semi-quantitative and digital quality assessment tools (iCheck Connect) for institutions and authorities mandated to monitor micronutrient fortified foods owned at country level. Sustainable credible self-monitoring by factories will need to be based on a business case and market framework demanding and rewarding quality compliance, including, seizing the opportunity supportive digital consumer information collaboratively with mills and other relevant stakeholders.
GAIN will work in a co-creative fashion with a global IT developer and service provider, premix manufacturers and other selected partners to develop and pilot a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) digital quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) system for oil mills as a start – but with a view to creating a global standard for QA/QC compliance systems, replicable and globally connected in context of a broader, deepening LSFF-specific piece adding on to the existing nutrition data system and community.
The digital QA/QC system will include scoping with and for premixers, mills and regulators to ultimately cost-effectively and systemically assess fortification quality at factory, market, and customs level, including software to capture data, verify trustworthiness, store, to ultimately create a data driven quality framing for mandated fortified foods. This will include a governance model to allow safe, reliable, and accurate data and creates a sustainable co-owned partnership between private and public sector actors in a quality- and compliance-demanding market framework to be built in collaboration with GAIN/BMGF LSFF partners.
The product will be pilot tested in Bangladesh, India and Nigeria and will be co-designed and adapted with local and global partners to ensure ownership, uptake, and sustainability. The product will be designed and aligned with partners to be ready to serve as a global standard for LSFF quality data reporting and according to country replication and uptake.
IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH
There are two fundamental reasons why programs may have little or no impact. First, theory failure where the causal pathway of the problem was poorly, or incompletely, understood when the program was designed such that the program could not address the primary cause of the problem. Second is implementation failure, where the interventions are not implemented as designed (poor fidelity of implementation) or are not accepted, understood, or applied by participants (poor uptake). Monitoring systems are well placed to track fidelity of implementation, but not to test and validate program theories (theories of change) and assure value for money – for which implementation research is better suited. This is more pertinent for innovations like the digital QA/QC system that have potential and can plausibly drive change but are untested.
As part of the digital QA/QC project, implementation research will be designed to track the process of intervention delivery, identify bottlenecks, and test and compare delivery related approaches in order to drive program implementation and inform learning for scale up to additional mills and for application elsewhere. When conducted alongside the delivery phase of a program, it can be used to monitor and strengthen intervention delivery and facilitate course-correction when fidelity of implementation is sub-optimal and thereby enhance potential for impact.
Implementation research and use of findings for refinement throughout the project phases (Figure 1):
– During planning, baseline data will be collected to assess the current situation before the project.
– During pilot (years 1-2), data will be collected to monitor implementation progress and change effectiveness of the pilot and will be used to analyse the project and inform when scale up can occur.
– During scale up (years 3-4), data will be collected to monitor implementation progress and change effectiveness alongside additional market assessments that aim to validate the fortification quality data coming out of the digital QA/QC system.
Figure 1. Implementation research (IR) data collection points aligned to digital QA/QC entry and exit phases
OBJECTIVES
The main objective is to design and conduct implementation research activities in Bangladesh, Nigeria and India to test and refine the digital QA/QC project theory of change during the planning and pilot phases, with particular focus on the digitization and gender equity efforts. This includes assessment of the current status (at baseline) and changes (up to the end of the pilot phase) regarding the cycle of food quality improvement:
The specific objectives are to:
(1) At baseline:
(a) conduct a literature review and design implementation research methods to be carried out in each country;
(b) develop a detailed program impact pathway (PIP) that illustrates the theory of change in each of the countries (e.g., outlining the quality improvement cycle and change that is expected through digitization at all levels including premix producers, food producers, regulatory authorities, and laboratories);
(c) review guidance on gender-sensitive fortification programming (being developed by GAIN during the planning phase) and integrate gender-sensitive metrics into all implementation research data collection activities; and
(d) collect relevant baseline data in each country to assess the current situation (before the digital QA/QC project), e.g., on the current roles/responsibilities, inputs/processes/outputs, and corrective actions (data indicators to be defined by the Service Provide and aligned to the PIP).
DEADLINE
- Proposal submission: 30 May 2022
- Final response regarding selection of Service Provider: 13 June 2022
- Contracting process finalized: 20 June 2022 Inception meeting with GAIN: 27 June 2022
- Study protocol and data collection tools for baseline: 1 August 2022
- Baseline data collection completed: 1 December 2022
- Baseline report: 31 December 2022 Review meetings with GAIN on course correction measures from baseline To be determined Data collection tools for ongoing data collection during pilot phase: 1 April 2023
- Ongoing data collection completed: 1 December 2023
- Final report and all datasets and data documentation (from baseline and pilot): 31 December 2023
CONTACT
Please direct all inquiries and other communications to rfp@gainhealth.org
Reponses will not be confidential except in cases where proprietary information is involved.
BUDGET
Applicants are required to provide GAIN with a detailed budget in US Dollars, including fees/travel/accommodation and any other direct costs to be incurred in the delivery of the Scope of Work. Include a brief narrative justification for line items included. The budget must be inclusive of all indirect costs. The final budget amount will have to be approved by GAIN prior to starting the project.
