Antecedentes

UN Women (UNW), grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, 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, the UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality are translated into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts while building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Under the UN WOMEN Uganda Country Programme (2016-2020), women’s economic empowerment is a key objective which is closely aligned to the SDGs, the National Development Plan II for Uganda and the UN WOMEN Flagship Programme on Women’s economic empowerment, entitled “Stimulating Equal Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurship, Procurement, Investment and Supply Chain Policies”.  The overall objective of the UN Women Women’s Economic Empowerment programme is to empower women to unleash their entrepreneurship potential through a) creating the conducive and supportive policy and legal environment and b) transforming women’s business mind-set. In order to achieve this, four interlinked and comprehensive interventions are foreseen: 1) Empower women through positive community mind-set change and behavior by increasing the awareness amongst community members, including traditional leaders, elders and men, on women’s vital role in wealth creation and in sustainable development; 2) Enhance women micro entrepreneur’s business mind-set, acumen and innovation through building their business skills, exposing them to untapped business opportunities and providing them with business development support; 3) Improve women micro entrepreneur’s access to affordable finance through boosting their financial literacy, linking them to financial institutions to access affordable finance, advocating with financial institutions to develop gender sensitive products for women micro entrepreneurs and establishing an innovation grant mechanism to support innovative women micro entrepreneurs; and 4) Strengthen the capacity of Government of Uganda to facilitate an enabling environment for Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) through the development and implementation of  enabling policies that  enhance  better coordination, planning and programming.

Public procurement presents a huge potential for women entrepreneurs to realize their economic aspirations by making sure that they benefit from the massive contracts awarded by government for various goods, services and works existing in the various supply chains. A multi-trillion industry accounting for 15-30 percent of GDP in countries, public procurement represents an enormous share of global demand for goods and services. However, women owned business (WOB) only access 1% of public procurement.  This is due to the enormous structural barriers which limit their growth and participation in public procurement as well as the overall development. These barriers include among others, lack of access to productive assets, affordable finance and ICTs, insufficient entrepreneurial and managerial skills, limited opportunities to markets and distribution networks. Besides, procurement and investment opportunities in Uganda rarely consider gender equality as a selection criteria, which negatively affects women owned businesses ability to sell to large buyers. Because of these barriers, women entrepreneurs and businesses owners have been largely unable to capitalize on government spending and international sourcing.

It is in line with the above, that the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act (PPDA) 2003 was amended in 2014 to provide for preference and reservation schemes among other means of promoting local business including those of women entrepreneurs. However, there are no statistics to show that these schemes have helped women to access more government contracts. The current procurement policies are gender neutral leaving the playing field unleveled. Consequently, there is a strong need for a deliberate approach to public procurement if an inclusive growth is to be achieved. Therefore, Public Procurement Disposal of Assets (PPDA) in collaboration with UN Women wishes to engage the services of an individual consultant to study the existing opportunities and barriers to participation of women enterprises in public procurement and to recommend measures that can be implemented to strengthen the involvement of women entrepreneurs in public procurement.

Deberes y responsabilidades

Scope of Services:

The consultant will be required to broadly study the barriers to women’s participation in public procurement, identify the existing opportunities and come up with proposals on how to facilitate affirmative action for women’s participation in public procurement.

Objectives of the Consultancy:

  • Carry out a study to identify the barriers and opportunities to participation of women in public procurement;
  • Review the existing legal and policy frameworks used for public procurement and recommend how these can be improved to enhance the involvement of women in public procurement;
  • Evaluate the existing affirmative action policies and programmes, and identify gaps and opportunities that hinder or facilitate women’s participation in public procurement;
  • Assess the experience of women entrepreneurs in bidding for public contracts, their understanding of policies, procedures and ability to meet requirements in public bidding;
  • Come up with clear recommendations that will inform the implementation process.

Under the overall guidance of the UN Women Deputy Representative, PPDA Director Corporate Affairs and direct supervision of the Programme Specialist, Women’s Economic Empowerment, the consultant will undertake the following tasks, in coordination with UN Women and PPDA:

  • Review the existing procurement laws, policies and programmes in the country;
  • Review the laws and programmes in other countries that have provisions that promote women participation in public procurement to identify good practices for replication and adaption;
  • Assess the role and functions of the PPDA and other key stakeholders in promoting women participation in public procurement;
  • Interview women in business to assess their capacities to tap into public procurement opportunities;
  • Produce a concise, evidence based and analytical report with clear recommendations.

Scope of Work:

  • Finalization of the Inception report that will include the documents to be reviewed, the proposed methodology including the tools to be applied, the institutions and people to be interviewed, the proposed workplan and the deliverables;
  • Desk review of key documents;
  • Conducting interviews with key stakeholders and women entrepreneurs;
  • Drafting the report;
  • Presentation of the draft report in the validation workshop and presenting two case studies for successful bidders;
  • Finalization of the report by incorporating all the comments and developing a policy brief summarizing the key issues.

Deliverables:

The following deliverables will be finalized in coordination with UN Women and PPDA

  • A brief Inception report with timelines for tasks specified above;
  •  Report with two case studies for women successful bidders;
  • A policy brief highlighting the key issues that will be used in advocating for affirmative procurement;
  • Approved final report with incorporated comments from UN Women, PPDA and the reference group members.

Competencias

The selected candidate should have:

  • Substantive knowledge and demonstrated experience in gender responsive public procurement;
  • Technical expertise on and knowledge of women’s economic empowerment, coordination with financial institutions, women entrepreneurs and women enterprise groups;
  • Technical experience of conducting research on women’s economic empowerment;
  • Skills to coordinate and facilitate consultations on similar studies on women’s economic empowerment;
  • Effective communication and knowledge management skills including lessons learned;
  • Ability to establish, build and sustain effective relationships with stakeholders, demonstrating understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

Education:

  • Master’s degree in Business Administration, Development Economics, Law, Agriculture Economics, Gender and Development Studies, or other related disciplines.

Experience:

  • At least seven (7) years of experience in the field of women’s economic empowerment, particularly in dealing with gender responsive public procurement;
  • Experience of working with government, the private sector on public procurement and women’s empowerment;
  • Experience of working with women entrepreneurs involved in public procurement
  • Excellent analytical, documentation and presentation skills in English are essential;
  • Excellent training skills, facilitation and leadership skills are essential.

Experience:

  • Knowledge of English language is must;
  • Knowledge of the local languages spoken in Uganda is an added advantage.

Evaluation:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on cumulative Analysis and therefore, only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points out of maximum 70 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

The following are the evaluation criteria of the technical evaluation:

  • Relevance of Education- 7 points;
  • Substantive knowledge and demonstrated experiences in gender responsive public procurement- 24.5 points;
  • Technical expertise in conducting similar studies on women’s economic empowerment- 14 points;
  • Skills and experience in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies- 10.5 points;
  • Description of Approach/ Methodology to complete the assignment- 14 points.

Payment Schedule:

Payment will be upon submission of deliverables as prescribed by an agreed-upon work plan and schedule and the applicable UN rates for the level of the consultancy.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document. Only duly submitted application with required documents will be accepted and considered for review:

             (second position under the section of Related Documents);

  • Personal CV and P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and, telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references. The link to UN Women P11 template is; http://www2.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/p_11_form_unwomen%20doc.doc?v=1&d=20141013T121437;

Technical proposal:

  • Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
  • A methodology and work plan on how they will approach and complete the assignment.

Financial proposal:

  • Indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the deliverables expected to meet the objectives of the assignment (The financial proposal template is included in the template of Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability above).