UN WOMEN Jobs - 89433- National Consultant-Conduct a baseline study for t

National Consultant-Conduct a baseline study for the Climate Smart Agriculture and Agri-Business (CSAAB) program- Re-advert

Advertised on behalf of

UN WOMEN

Location :

Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

22-Jan-2020

Application Deadline :

19-Jan-20 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

60 working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

60 working days

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women's rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) envisions to become a Center of Excellence for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) with capacity and clout to influence national and regional political, social and economic agendas. The ECO uses result Based Management and a Rights Based Approaches to promote women as rights holders, while supporting the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and other stakeholders to be gender responsive as duty bearers and development partners. The country office is working on four priority areas: increasing women’s leadership and participation, ending violence against women and girls; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting.

Aligned to UN Women Ethiopia Strategic Note (2017-2020), Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) interventions focus on creating opportunities for women living in rural and urban areas by binding their agencies, promoting their access and control over productive resources such as land, climate resilient agriculture and agricultural technologies, inputs and services, finances and know-how to ensure that they are economically empowered and increasingly benefit from economic development initiatives, programs and reforms in Ethiopia. These strategic focuses have also been translated through its various programs including the ongoing Joint Program on Women Economic Empowerment (JP RWEE) and Gender Transformative and Integrated Climate Smart Agriculture and Agri- Business (CSAAB) Program.

To sustain the intended Women’s Economic Empowerment results for Ethiopian women and girls, UN Women ECO engages multiple strategies including building capacity of financial and non-financial service providers on gender mainstreaming to ensure women have better access to services, as well as strengthening gender equality advocates and their networks to enhance women’s agency and advocacy on women’s economic empowerment. Deconstructing the existing gender relations at the community level by working with men and boys, community and traditional leaders, to remove structural and social barriers to women’s economic empowerment has also been identified as critical intervention areas for the WEE Program.

SOS Sahel Ethiopia is a non-profit organization with close to 30 years of development experience. Formerly the country program of SOS Sahel (UK), and transformed into an independent national NGO in 2007. SOS Sahel Ethiopia’s core business is to create better future for smallholder farmers and pastoralists (men and women) through actions that enable them to exercise their rights, create fair access to resources, opportunities and services; reduce the inequalities and power imbalance they experience and enhance the sustainability of the fragile environment on which they depend. SOS Sahel Ethiopia’s current strengths combine proven track record of community-based natural resources management, climate smart agriculture, food/livelihoods security, value chain business development, social inclusion, women empowerment and gender equality, institutional capacity building, and disaster risk management.

UN Women and SOS Sahel Ethiopia has partnered to implement Gender transformative Climate Smart Agriculture and Agribusiness (CSAAB) program in October 2019. The program promotes the economic empowerment of women farmers and female youth in the rural areas for climate resilient and sustainable livelihoods by using integrated and multi-sectoral approaches to overcome the existing gender gaps in agricultural productivity. The program will be piloted in Oromia and will be upscaled to other regions based on the lessons learned and best practices from the pilot stage.

In Ethiopia, women farmers and female youth contribute more than 50 percent of farm labor (FAO, 2011), but cultivate less than one hectare of land per household (CSA, 2016). Most agricultural policies and investments still fail to consider differences in the resources available to men and women, their roles, labor burdens and the constraints they face. Ethiopia is vulnerable to effects of climate change which affect its economic development. Both agriculture and livestock sectors are heavily impacted by the climate change, leading to loss of livelihoods for millions of people with related socio-economic costs.

Although the Ethiopian constitution guarantees women the same rights as men, weak enactment of the legal provisions and customary, traditional and religious norms put women farmers at a disadvantaged position (limited access to finance, market opportunities, green technologies and agricultural extension services). It is estimated that the gender gap in farm crop productivity in Ethiopia in 2015-2016 was 9.8 per cent. Closing this gender gap could result in a one-off increase of US$203.5 million in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The program will seek to use transformative gender mainstreaming, result based management (RBM) and Human Rights Based Management (HRBM) approaches to closing the gender gap in agribusiness. It is aligned with (GTPII) 2015/16-2019/20), UNDAF (2016-20120) and Sustainable Development Goals as well as UN Women’s global and regional initiatives on climate smart agriculture. It builds on the experiences and lessons drawn from previous projects and programs including: Program on Promoting Women’s Economic Leadership in Market-Oriented Agriculture, and a joint program on rural women’s economic empowerment (implemented with FAO, IFAD and WFP).

The CSAAB program aims to build women farmer’s and female youth’ individual skills and knowledge, strengthen their collective agency, and connecting farmer’s groups with critical inputs and output markets and extension services, creating enabling environment to realize their aspirations and capabilities and influencing existing power imbalances that have undermined women’s negotiation capacity. During the two-year implementation period, the CSAAB aims at achieving the following three interrelated results:

A gender-responsive policy, social and economic empowerment is in place for impartial access and control over productive resources and opportunities as well as Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Agri-business practices by women farmers and female youth.
Women and female youth farmer’s productivity is increased in a changing climate
Opportunities for women farmers and female youths to move up sustainable CSA value-chains are provided

Prior to the CSAAB implementation at grass root level, baseline information is required, including data and information on the socio-economic situation, the practices, norms and policies that affect the farming communities and the women and girls specifically. To this end, UN Women and SOS Sahel Ethiopia are looking for a team of experienced and qualified consultants who will undertake a baseline study and support revision of performance indicators and updating of the overall results framework.

BASELINE STUDY OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the baseline study is to gain a better understanding of the target beneficiaries, their families, the institutional environment and climate implications that affect their agricultural activities and productivity. The baseline study aims at achieving the following objectives:

To generate qualitative and quantitative baseline information regarding the initial indicators set in the logical framework
To assess the target women’s and female youths in rural and urban peripherals understanding of the agricultural value chains, climate change and economic empowerment.
To assess the target group’s expectations regarding the planned trainings and other activities
To identify key institutions’ current practices regarding GEWE and CSA
To identify the enabling factors, constraints and risks for the implementation of the CSAAB program and the ongoing legal and policy frameworks relevant.

Duties and Responsibilities

The team of consultants supervised/led by lead consultant is expected to deliver the following:

1. The Inception Report will define the approach and methodology to the baseline, study tools to be used and the framework. The inception report should be approved by the UN Women and SOS Sahel Ethiopia before starting data collection. The Inception report will be used to confirm a common understanding of the purpose, objectives, scope, timescales, and methodology for the baseline. It will include:

Overview of the baseline, purpose and objectives
Team roles and responsibilities
Baseline framework and methodology including tools
Information collection and analysis
Workplan including reporting timelines
Consultants work experience on a similar subject and context
At the time of the inception report, the team of consultants will make a presentation detailing the salient features of the survey that the team will be sharing with key stakeholders.

2. The team leader will submit the draft baseline report to UN Women in the structure specified below. The outline and main findings of the baseline should be completed and handed to UN Women during the final debriefing session. A Power Point is expected from the team during the presentation of the draft final report.

3. Based on the feedback of the stakeholders during the de-briefing, the team will finalize and submit the final version of the report to SOS Sahel Ethiopia and UN Women. The length of the baseline report should not exceed 30 pages, excluding Annexes. While the team is free to use any detailed method of reporting, the Survey Report should contain at least the following:

Title Page
List of acronyms and abbreviations
Table of contents, including list of annexes
Executive Summary
Introduction: background, context and purpose of the baseline
Key questions and scope of baseline with information on limitations and de-limitations
Approach and methodology
Findings
Summary analysis of findings against project objectives and indicators
Conclusions and recommendations
Lessons learned
References
Annexes including tools used in the assessment

In the Final Report, the team is expected to provide details in respect of:

Documents reviewed;
Interviews;
Survey Questionnaires,
Participatory techniques and other approaches for gathering and analysis of data; and
Participation of stakeholders and/or partners.

In addition, the final report should contain the following annexes:

Terms of Reference for the Survey
Itinerary (actual)
List of meetings attended
List of persons interviewed with contact details
List of documents reviewed

Competencies

Core Values/guiding principles:

Integrity - Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
Professionalism - Demonstrate professional competence and Consultant knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
Cultural sensitivity and respect for diversity - Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Additionally, each individual should have an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Core Competencies:

Planning & Organizing – Develops clear goals in line with agreed strategies, identifies priorities, foresees risks and makes allowances accordingly.
Organizational Awareness - Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
Teamwork - Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi-ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
Accountability – Takes ownership of all responsibilities and delivers outputs in accordance with agreed time, cost and quality standards.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

Minimum qualification of master’s Degree in the field of agriculture, climate change, gender equality, agricultural economics and Monitoring and Evaluation
The consultancy service requires three experts with significant experience
The team of experts including the lead consultant should have a complementary academic profile

Expierence

Proven record of a minimum of 7 years’ experience in conducting gender analysis, baseline studies and program end or midterm evaluation with a proven skill of developing M&E framework. Thus, the lead consultant is expected to organize the required two experts/experiences professional under his /her leadership in submitting the proposal

Language and skill

All consultants need to have excellent knowledge of written and oral communication in English and excellent knowledge of written and oral communication in Amharic and Afan Oromo
Computer skills: full command of Microsoft applications relevant to the assignment including SPSS

NOTE

Interested applicants must submit the following document/information (in PDF format) to demonstrate their qualifications

Technical component:

Letter of interest explaining why they are the most suitable for the work
A technical proposal clearly giving the consultant/s understanding of the assignment, proposed basline survey and methodology, detailed timeline
Signed Curriculum vitae with contact details of 03 clients for whom you have rendered preferably similar services
The proposal should be submitted in English, contain a table of contents. The proposal should be not more than 12 pages not including attachments.

Financial proposal (with your signature)

A financial proposal specifying a total lump sum amount breaking down a daily professional fee and budget including approximate number of days and other relevant costs including any required sub-contracting should be included within the proposal
Please note that the cost of preparing a proposal and of negotiating a contract, including any related travel, is not reimbursable as a direct cost of the assignment.
If quoted in other currency, prices shall be converted to US Dollar at UN Exchange Rate at the submission deadline.

Technical and Financial proposal should be sent to ethiopia.public@unwomen.org with a subject 'CSAAB Programme Baseline study' Only applications with all items mentioned above will be considered.