Request for Proposal (RFP) - Develop Seed System Knowledge Products at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is an organisation that seeks to transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses that improve the livelihoods of the continent’s farming households.

Applications are invited for:

Title: Request for Proposal (RFP) - Develop Seed System Knowledge Products (Including Studies to have Data, Case Studies, Tools and Models)

AGRA’s mission is to Catalyze and Sustain an Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa to increase Incomes and improve Food Security of millions of smallholder farming households with a set of targeted catalytic downstream and systemic investments coupled with government engagement made through its alliance of partners.

One of the key lessons that AGRA learnt over years is that agricultural transformation requires an integrated approach across an ecosystem of partnerships at three levels – farmer level, systems level, and country level. AGRA’s work at system and farmer-level seeks to drive productivity, value chain integration, access to markets and boost resilience. Evidence across the world clearly show that efficient and effective seed systems contribute to the biggest percentage of increased productivity. While a lot of progress has been made in the seed space in Africa as evidenced by governments pulling out of seed production and distribution and placing it in the hands of the private sector.

The number of private seed companies local, regional, and multinational average to 6 per country, quantity of improved seed produced has equally increased tremendously and equally true are the distribution systems through Agro-dealers. However, there are still some notable challenges like lack of coordination of efforts being made resulting in certain seed system elements being neglected. There is a tendency to focus on production at the expense of others like seed quality, policy reforms, farmer awareness, national planning, and coordination. It is also difficult to get right data for use to make right decisions and investments.

It is against this backdrop that the idea to establish a Center of Excellence for Seed Systems in Africa (CESSA) was initiated with AGRA identified as the host. Agri-Experience a Nairobi based firm was contracted to work with AGRA to design the establishment of CESSA and the aim is to have the center start offering services in 2023 but for this to happen, several things ought to be in place in 2022. Some of the services envisaged for offering by CESSA include country seed analysis through the Seed Assessment Tool (SeedSAT), capacity building and training, catalytic grants, technical advice, knowledge and data library, case studies, convenings and alliances and access to finance. It is obvious that not all these services will be offered at the start of the operationalization of CESSA. However, some ought to be there and one of them is knowledge products including data, models, and case studies so that when clients come seeking for them they are made available. On many occasions, seed clients/pratictioners look for information, data, working models in vain. Where it is available it is scattered, not in one central place, at times it is difficult to figure out which institution to approach for such services.

Pursuant to the above highlighted, AGRA would like to engage a qualified consultant(s) to collect and collate knowledge products including data, models, case studies that are required by seed sector stakeholders including seed companies, government institutions like seed regulatory agencies, national planning divisions among others to effectively run their business/activities.

Objective of the Assignment

The objective is to enable seed business enterprises and institutions have access to the right information and practices to enable them to do the right things, timely and efficiently. A lot of time is lost looking for information, best practices, and models and in many instances, they totally fail to get them, thus missing out opportunities to improve and offer better services to the farmers.

The consultancy will include but not be limited to the following tasks:

The consultancy will be expected to deliver, the following outputs:

The consultancy shall have experience in seed systems (minimum 10 years) and is expected to engage very skilled analysts with deep understanding and experience of models for different elements of seed systems at technical, business and policy levels. Particular qualifications and experience of the consultancy include:

Team Leader:

Knowledge Management Expert:

5:00pm, 23rd March, 2022.

Proposals SHALL be submitted via email to: procurement@agra.org Please include the subject line "RFP/016/PID/2022" of the email.

Note

Click Here (Ms Word) for a detailed description of the RFP.