Request for Proposal (RFP) at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

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) - Design of Seed Sector Strategy and Investment Plan for Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Ghana

Reference No: RFP/064/PID/2022

Background
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty. AGRA is seeking to catalyze an agricultural transformation in eleven (11) key focus countries namely, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria in West Africa and Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in East and Southern Africa. AGRA’s mission is to trigger an African-led green revolution based on smallholder farmers in Africa with key goals of increasing the incomes of at least 30 million farm households through productivity improvements and access to markets and finance and ensuring all focus countries are on a pathway to attain and sustain an agricultural transformation.

A well performing and efficient seed system is a prerequisite for agricultural transformation in every country. Over the years, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has invested significant amount of resources to develop the seed sector in Africa.  AGRA’s attention to seed systems started in 2007 when it launched its signature investment, the Program for Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS) with an investment of $150 million. This investment spanned over 13 African countries. The program generated interest and more partners increased funding to a tune of $285 million to cover a period of 10 years to finance seed systems with additional coverage to 17 African countries. The PASS goal was to develop sustainable, mostly private sector-based, seed systems in Africa that would increase access for smallholder farmers to improved crop varieties that produce higher crop yields resulting in increased income, improved food security and reduced poverty. However, AGRA noted that most of the investments in the seed sector were not sufficiently fixing the systemic gaps and challenges in the seed sector. The lack of a comprehensive seed sector investment plan that shows investment issues, gaps and funding options has generally affected the ability of seed systems to ensure integrated delivery of services to farmers. Recognizing the significance of having a robust strategy and comprehensive investment framework to guide seed sector interventions and prioritize investments, AGRA commissioned a comprehensive assessment of seed system to understand the status, issues, challenges, gaps and potential investment in the seed sector in in 11 AGRA countries. The assessment was intended to further provide AGRA with additional insights of the systematic bottlenecks in the seed sector to guide AGRA’s own catalytic, but also mobilize additional, investments to fix seed issues and gaps.

While a lot of progress has been made in Africa in the seed landscape, most of these efforts remain uncoordinated making it difficult to quickly to know exactly what is broken, what is being addressed, how, by who and where but more importantly where to run to for solutions. It is against this backdrop that AGRA was designated by various partners to host a Centre of Excellence in Seed Systems in Africa (CESSA) and the process of developing a comprehensive CESSA flagship program is nearing completion. One of the cornerstone programs of CESSA is the Seed Systems Analysis Tool (SeedSAT) aimed at analyzing the functionality of national seed systems to identify gaps and make prioritized recommendations for intervention. SeedSAT was last year piloted in Nigeria and Ethiopia, and now it is being rolled out in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana. This process will be completed by June this year and thereafter roll it in the next four countries Rwanda, Mozambique, Mali and Burkina Faso. Unlike other initiatives and projects which conduct studies, and their outputs end at just submission of reports, AGRA under its flagship program CESSA plans to do it differently by taking it a notch higher to help governments develop the prioritized recommendations into investment plans which they can use to allocate funds from national coffers to address the gaps or use these investments plans to sell to development partners for help. With such investment plans in place, governments will be in position to systematically guide seed interventions as opposed to doing them in an ad-hoc manner.

Building on the SeedSAT work and based on the gaps identified by analytical and diagnostic studies in several countries, AGRA seeks to support countries in developing comprehensive National Seed Sector Strategy and Investment Plans for Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, Ghana and Kenya. The work will build on the results, findings and gaps identified by the SeedSAT through pilot studies in Nigeria and Ethiopia and will incorporate these insights to develop a systemwide and comprehensive seed sector investment plan and strategy in Nigeria and Ethiopia where the SeedSAT analysis is completed. In Nigeria, the comprehensive plan will be used to update existing National Seed Road Maps (NSRM). The work is aimed at strengthening the seed system in the target countries. The goal is to support the development of a robust seed sector strategy and investment plans that provide a structured guide to AGRA countries for identifying and prioritizing bottleneck in the seed sectors and preparing investment proposals and plans to tackle these bottlenecks, and hence ensure integrated delivery of services to farmers.

Objectives of the Assignment
The specific objectives of this initiative would be done in:

• Validate with partners and stakeholders’ findings from a recently concluded country seed system studies in the new countries
• Develop a customized and prioritized roadmap for seed investments and their sequenced rollout that would lead to the development and strengthening of the in the seed systems in new countries, while mapping the key institutions and costing
• Develop and ratify investment plans with ministries of agriculture as documents to present to governments and development partners to fix gaps identified in the seed systems

Scope of Services
The specific objective of this consultancy is to help the 6 national governments of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana, based on findings from systemwide seed sector analysis done under SeedSAT, develop investment plans which they can pitch for funding. These strategy and operational plans will provide guidance to address key bottlenecks in the seed systems of those countries and this is in line with what is envisaged as CESSA offerings that is provide guidance, support and not necessarily funding. AGRA developed a comprehensive “Guide for the Design of Country Seed Strategy and Investment Plan ”. This assignment will build from this guide, the work AGRA has done under SeedSAT, as well as leverage on existing seed Sector Operational Plans.

The specific objectives are as follows:

• Review the existing National Seed Strategies and Investment plans to identify critical gaps and implementation challenges.
• Review the country SeedSAT reports (gaps and recommendations) and, based on that, develop investment plans for each of the 6 countries
• Use outcomes of the intensive and extensive reviews, and build on recommendations from SeedSAT assessments, to develop comprehensive seed sector strategy and investment plans in each of the target countries.
• Develop a costed investment plan that demonstrates that the seed system has been analyzed and investments designed to target all the issues and challenges.
• Validate the investment plans with key stakeholders of each of the 6 countries

The work will be done in two phases:

• Phase 1: Ethiopia and Nigeria where SeedSAT has already been done. This phase will start off immediately since the issues, gas and analysis has been done
• Phase 2: Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Malawi. AGRA and countries are currently initiating the SeedSAT analysis. Once completed, the results will be used to undertake and design a similar and comprehensive Seed Sector.

Deliverables and Measurable Outputs of the Work Assignment
The Consultant is expected to deliver the following:

• Inception Report - the firm shall produce an Inception Report within 7 days after the contract is signed. The report shall provide a clear picture of how the Consultant understands the ToRs and intends to achieve the expected tasks. It shall highlight the proposed methodology and the work plan with timelines for all the tasks that the Consultant will undertake during the assignment.
• An outline of the seed strategy and investment plan– the firm shall provide a detailed outline of the seed strategy and investment plan, clearly providing a structured guideline of the sections and components of the strategy document.
• A comprehensive Seed Sector investment plan – the firm shall provide comprehensive seed sector investment plan for each of the 6 countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi and Kenya) indicating what needs to be done, outlining relative roles and responsibilities of the government and key stakeholders, including the private sector and funding partners.
• Costed investment plans – Comprehensive and costed investment plans that outline the existing costs by the government, other partners and the funding gaps. This should be broken down across the key systems elements and thematic areas (Breeding, variety release and maintenance; Early generation seed; Quality commercial seed production; Farmer awareness and participation; Seed markets and distribution; Policy, legal and regulatory environment; National quality assurance; National planning and coordination), and for each of the 6 countries.

Qualifications of the Consultancy Firm

• The consultancy firm shall demonstrate that it has key expertise with the following requirements: Minimum 8 years of experience in Seed Systems related work and assessments on the African continent including strategy and investment plan design.
• Evidence of knowledge and demonstration of development of strategies and investment plans.
• Deep knowledge and experience in seed systems, competent in analytics and deep understanding and experience of models for different elements of seed systems. The firm must possess a sound reputation with demonstrated in-depth knowledge of public and private sector-led agriculture in Africa
• Experience working with seed stakeholders in Africa
• The consultant must demonstrate ability to design strategies and plans for public and private sector investments.
• Previous experience of conducting similar analyses of African agriculture
• In-country presence in and deep knowledge of target AGRA priority countries
• Demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the policy landscape in Africa
• Experience in working with government agencies, private sector and development partners is an added advantage.
• Experience in CAADP/ Malabo/ AUDA-NEPAD related issues is an advantage.
• Good references for reliability, dedication, and an ability to work unsupervised.
• Previous experience in providing technical support/conducting assessments to the AGRA target countries is an advantage.

Application Closing Date
17:00 hours (East African Time), 2nd May, 2022.

Submission of Documents
Complete proposals SHALL be submitted to: procurement@agra.org

Please note the following:

• Please include “RFP/064/PID/2022” on the subject line on the email.
• The Proposals shall be prepared in English Language.
• The technical proposal shall not exceed 20 pages.
• The proposal and ALL Attachments submitted via email SHALL NOT exceed 10MB.
• VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for a period of 90 days from the date of bid closure.
• Financial proposal shall be sent as a separate attachment and MUST be password protected. The password shall be requested from firms that meet the minimum technical score of 75%).

Click Here (MS WORD) for a detailed description of the RFP.