The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a CGIAR Research Center, is seeking applications from suitably qualified candidates for a consulting assignment under project titled "Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainability".
Background
The food sector is the largest source of income and employment but is unable to provide decent livelihoods for billions depending on it. It is predicted that around tens of millions of young people will enter labor markets in South Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa every year with few prospects. Growing food markets provide enormous potential with the right market incentives and environment to foster innovations for inclusive and sustainable development. However, weaknesses and inefficiencies in the value chain and market integration and regulation generate poor outcomes for both people and the environment and limit the engagement and benefits of youths and women.
To address these challenges, the Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainability-Initiative aims to provide evidence on what types of bundled innovations, incentive structures, and policies are most effective for creating more equitable sharing of income and employment opportunities in growing food markets while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint. It will seek to discover promising and adaptable innovations for improved vertical coordination, inclusive contracting, certification for food quality and sustainability, inclusive digital platforms, and more. It will pilot and assess the potential for, and tradeoffs associated with bringing these bundled innovations to scale, to make a sustained development and environmental impact.
In collaboration with local partners, the four work packages (WPs) of this Initiative will produce key deliverables (outputs) consisting of robust evidence bases and rigorous impact assessments of the top technological, process, and policy innovations for inducing positive changes in markets and value chains in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Central America, and, possibly, Uzbekistan. These outputs and activities will generate 4 tangible WP-level outcomes:
By the end of the Initiative in 2024, it is expected that around 30,000 people in households of self-employed, owners, and workers of participating farms and agrifood businesses will directly benefit from the piloted innovations (15,000 each in domestic and global value chains). Participation and uptake will be encouraged through the co-design of the innovations with key local stakeholders, to move from WP-level outcomes toward End-of-Initiative Outcomes. In addition, SMEs in 3 countries are expected to use digital platforms to improve their access to logistics support and finance, benefitting at least 4,000 workers, especially women and youth amongst them. Additionally, policymakers in 6 target geographies will have changed policies to enable the scaling up by providing regulatory frameworks and stimulating the adoption of innovations by 10,000 smallholder farms and SMEs. A rigorous gender- and youth-sensitive lens will enable women and youth to comprise, respectively, 45% and 20% of these beneficiaries.
The initiative prioritizes the development of possibly ten innovation bundles and their scaling preparedness. These innovation bundles form four types of core innovation: 1) inclusive business and vertical coordination models; 2) product quality upgrading and standard certification; 3) digital innovations in logistics and financing services; and 4) global knowledge management. The Initiative’s strategy for monitoring, evaluating, learning, and impact assessment and scaling preparedness and actions (MELIAamp;SPA) consists of various interconnected components: (1) Monitoring, evaluation, learning, and impact assessment, and (2) Scaling preparedness and action.
From this backdrop, this consultancy assignment commissions two MELIamp;SPA-related activities: 1) process tracing assessment, and 2) impact assessment. Specifically, this consultancy aims to: