Oxfam America Horn of Africa Regional Office/Ethiopia
Invitation for Consultancy -AGRA Project Baseline study Terms of Reference
Mid-Term Evaluation of Increasing Smallholder Agricultural Productivity (ISAP) Project
Back ground
Oxfam America (OA) is an international development agency that operates with a vision of creating lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice by working with others. To achieve its mission and objectives in Ethiopia, Oxfam America is implementing a number of development programs/projects as well as humanitarian interventions for the decades.
Oxfam America with the support from Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), has recently launched a three-year project “Increasing Smallholder Agricultural Productivity through Improved Farmer Training Centers (ISAP)” The project is intended to establish and pilot a new and replicable approach to transforming Ethiopian agriculture by improving and transforming the capacities of 60 pilot FTCs, DAs assigned in those FTCs and SMS providing backups to DA (See annex 2 for the details of FTC’s distributions per regions). The project will be piloted in four Regional States (Oromia, Amhara, SNNP and Tigray) and the result is expected to significantly increase productivity and incomes of 30,000 smallholder farmers. The project will document best-practices, success stories, and lessons learned to guide future scale-up efforts by the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and others. Key project activities, among other includes,: establishing FTC MCs; training FTC MCs in self-governance; providing improved seeds and farm tools for demonstration; developing and/or providing FTC training materials; training farmers and DAs on critical knowledge and skill gaps; demonstrating improved technologies and agronomic and integrated soil fertility management practices on FTC demo plots; promoting ICT-based innovations (DG) to enhance technology dissemination and adoption; training DAs on computer applications and DG technology; establishing market information centers and providing mobile devices and accessories for improved marketing and linkages; training DAs/SMSs on mobile-based market information, market chains, rural enterprise development, and assessing risks based on product selection; organizing community trade fairs; establishing market price boards at target FTCs to provide latest price information; and documenting key lessons and best practices for latter scale up. Project Goal, Objectives and Outcomes of the Project Goal: To increase agricultural productivity and income of smallholder farmers (including women) in 60 Kebeles in the four Regional States of Ethiopia. Objective 1: To strengthen the capacity of 60 targeted FTCs (to become information & knowledge hubs) and local institutions to provide demand-based extension services to smallholder farmers. Outcome 1: Enhanced organizational and technical capacity of the FTCs & local institutions in delivering demand-driven extension services to smallholder farmers Objective 2: To increase smallholder female and male farmer and male and female DA knowledge and skills, and use of ISFM, improved seeds and good agronomic practices in the 60 kebeles. Outcome 2: Increased smallholder farmer awareness on ISFM technologies and best farming practices in 60 Kebeles in Ethiopia Objective 3: To enhance capacity of FTCs and skills of DAs to organize farmers, improve access to market information and post-harvest management Outcome 3: Increased farmers and FOs access to markets by smallholders in 60 Kebeles Objective 4: To identify and document best practices, success stories, and lessons learned for use in future scale-up efforts. Outcome4: Increased FOs, MoA and other partners access to scalable models and practices.
Objectives of the baseline study:
The general objective of the baseline study/survey is to establish reliable baseline data for AGRA project interventions’ key outputs or outcomes indicators with analysis of the current situations so that we could assess project progresses towards projects results and impacts in the future. The baseline study will generate/document gender disaggregated data at least on the key indicators specified and defined in the projects’ results framework or project’s logic (about 19 KPI) and also conduct deeper analysis of those quantitative and qualitative baseline information.
Methodology
To carry out this study the consultant will employ:
Quantitative and qualitative methods to generate baseline data on the project’s outcome or outputs indicators (see the annex below).
Multi- stage sampling will be followed for selecting representative FTCs form the targeted project FTCs. After determining the overall sample size of the households to be surveyed (per regions), simple random sampling methods will be employed for randomly selecting the ISAP project targeted small-holders who are the potential/planned users of the FTCs and other project interventions.
Quantitative data will be collected (using the questionnaire to be developed in consultation with the OA-HARO MEL and AGRA specialists), edited, processed and will be analyzed using appropriate statistical packages while qualitative data will be collected through qualitative tools (such as focus group discussions, key informant interview, observations etc.,) and will be analyzed systematically.
The data should be collected in anticipation of outcome evaluation (after three years) that will also require the conduct of the follow-up/end line survey on the same sampled FTCs and targeted small-holders benefiting from ISAP project so as to see the progresses towards outcome.
The study should come up with gender disaggregated data and the conduct of gender analysis ( using OA gender analysis toolkit ) of the current situations around the project interventions
Appropriate counterfactual can also be established now or during the end line (outcome) survey so as to attribute the outcome/benefits to the intervention.
Expected outputs/core deliverables and schedules
Desk review of relevant project documents related to agricultural extensions, Oxfam America’s Agricultural extension project documents, ISAP project documents, its results framework/logic model,
Inception reports with methodology, data collection tools, work scheduling, and framing of questions by the first week of the assignment
Field work /data collection-not more than three weeks (excluding travel time to the regions) and also field work reports/processes.
Production of draft reports within two weeks of data collection and analysis in gender lens ,
Submission of final reports, after comments from all stakeholders (within five days of receiving the comments)
Handover of all raw qualitative and quantitative data in electronic form (cleaned version), with hard copies of the report
Requirements
The consulting firm should have experience in conducting baseline studies, project/program evaluations (especially around agricultural related programs/projects). The consultant team should fulfill the following requirements:
Post graduate degree in agricultural economics, agriculture development studies & other relevant social sciences from a recognized institution,
Extensive experience in conducting evaluations, baseline studies, and researches in the areas of agricultural growth initiatives and agricultural extension in particular,
Experience in program design, and monitoring and in producing high quality study or evaluations report,
Excellent working knowledge of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) framework,
Excellent reporting writing skills in English language
Consultancy fee Payment Schedule:
First Installment 30% up on signature of the agreement
Second Installment 30% up on receiveing the draft report
Third installment 40% up on receving the final Payment
Annex 1: Geographical location and Disrtition of FTCs per regions