Terms of Reference : Household Economy Analysis (HEA) and Baseline Assessment for The

Terms of Reference : Household Economy Analysis (HEA) and Baseline assessment for the Conservation Farming Unit’s DFID Funded Climate Smart Agriculture Zambia Project

Organization / Conservation Farming Unit (CFU)
Project / Climate Smart Agriculture, Zambia (CSAZ)
Position type / Consultancy
Study/assessment topic / Household Economic Assessment (HEA) Baseline 2017
Study Sites / CFU Operation Areas in CFU Regions (Central, Eastern, Western, and Southern)
Duration / 40 days, including Data Collection and Report Delivery
Reporting to / Results Management, M&E Manager
Working with / CFU Regional Manager, Senior Field Officers, and Field Officers
Application deadline / 30th August 2017
Start Date / 18th September 2017
Vacancy contact / and copying

1. PROJECT SUMMARY

The Conservation Farming Unit (CFU), a not-for-profit organisation being sponsored by the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), under its Climate Smart Agriculture Zambia (CSAZ), provides trainings to an outreach of over 150,000 farmers annually across four (4) regions namely Central, Eastern, Western and Southern. The CSAZ project has 81 Field Officers (FOs) and 11 Senior Field Officers (SFOs) across the four regions. Each FO trains and/or oversees training of about 2,700 farmers three times annually. The majority of trainees of the CFU are small-scale farmers in the rural and peri-urban areas of Zambia. These trained farmers are in turn expected to practice one form or another of minimum tillage as they have been trained.

The main goals/objectives of the project are:

Overall (or final goal): Well-being, livelihoods and climate resilience of Zambian farming families who depend on field-scale, rain-fed agriculture sustainably improved.

The key specific (or intermediate goal) is improved production, productivity and climate resilience of production.

The principal strategies of the project include:

Training Zambian farming families depending on rain fed agriculture in CSA practices.

Support Zambian farming families in adopting CSA practices

Formulate, implement a Private Sector Strategy to ensure that networks of rural input suppliers and tillage service providers is established and expanded to serve the needs of CF adopters

Develop and implement a CFU Business Model Developed to ensure sustainability

The target population in largely small scale and medium scale rural famers because over the years, these have demonstrated lack of resilience and food security. The project will however also seek to support even large scale farmers to enhance climate smart technologies.

2. ASSESSMENT GOAL
The overall goal of the assignment is to allow the CFUto get an understanding of the socio-economic benefits derived from the CSAZ project at household economy level and track both household and community level resilience shocks related to climate’s effects on agriculture.

3. PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The CFU is looking for a team of consultants in undertaking Household Economy Analysis (HEA) to help design and undertake a crucial livelihoods-based framework that willhelp provide a clear and accurate representation of the inside workings of CSAZ farmingcommunities’household economies at different levels of the wealth continuum. The team of consultants will help undertake a comprehensive baseline assessment in the project areas which will serve as benchmark against which impact results will be measuredat the mid-point and end of the project. This is to ensure proper orientation of the programme while highlightinga number of aspects of the project that have been designed before implementation.

Household Economy Analysis (HEA)

The Household Economy Approach (HEA) is an innovative analytical framework that provides arich source of information about how the poor live. It describes the assets and resourcesaccessible for different types of households, and how these resources are exploited in the daily,seasonal and long-term process of making ends meet. The holistic view of household operationsenables planners to predict household’s vulnerability to shocks, such as a flood, drought or risein food prices and offers valuable insight to inform social development programming. Duringthe HEA Baseline, direct discussions with different population groups allow information to beanalyzed on the value of different assets, households’ sources of food and income, and theirexpenditure. The HEA also looks at access to markets, including employment opportunities,and considers the relationship of households and communities with the wider economy.

Based on the principle and understanding of ways to make ends meet for people, the HouseholdEconomy Analysis (HEA) will be essential to assess how community livelihoods will be impacted bytheir economic or ecological change; with the results helping the CFU refine, re-designand improve interventions that will support households copying strategies. This will be through theanalysis of:

How Households in the community in different social and economic cycles get the food andcash needed as well as whether or not this is influenced by one being an adopter of CSA or not an adopter.

Community and Household assets, available opportunities hidden or open to them and theconstraints being faced.

Any open options to communities at the times of crisis through analyzing any connections ofdifferent livelihood groups and different villages; this gives a picture of how community assetsare shared or allocated within the community and who gets what from whom.

The results will also be used in intervention improvement, shock response, early warning, monitoring andevaluation, poverty analysis and reduction, and research content analysis. It is envisaged that thisassessment will use the two main components of Household Economy Analytical framework.

Key Indicators

The HEA taskshould establish the current values of the following indicators and clearly show how this has been computed so that subsequent similar studies would use the same methods of computing the indicators:

Impact Indicator 1:Proportion of Households above the Survival Threshold (disaggregated by Socio-Economic status and adoption status)

Impact Indicator 2:Proportion of Households above the Resilience/Protection Threshold (disaggregated by Socio-Economic status and adoption status)

4. METHODOLOGY

Household Economy Approach (HEA) Analysis; to be undertaken by analyzing unique livelihoods in the project areas and helping develop a clear and accurate representation ofcommunity household economies at different levels of a wealth continuum in the project areas. The main aim of the HEA analysis will be to help the CFU CSAZ predict the ability of different households copying with changes in economic conditions (e.g.crop failure, inflation, market fluctuations, agro-dealer challenges etc.) and identify vulnerable groups

5. PROJECT DISTRICTS

The Map below shows the areas of operations as at July 2017. It is hoped that more districts will be however covered in due course.

6. DELIVERABLES

Inception Report to be reviewed and validated by the CFU RM, M&E team: includes initial work plan and detailed methodology, analysis plan, report outlines of final products, process of data collection, and the revised budget if needed.
Training and participation of two Planning, M&E Officers in data collection using the HEA framework.
A clean database of the detailed HEA findings
A Power Point presentation of the main findings
Draft report of the HEA survey in line with the HEA analytical framework for the feedback and comments from the CFU RM, M&E Manager
Final HEA report including:
Characteristics of the Livelihood Zones
Detailed description and analysis of CFU operational areas’ Livelihood zone(s)
Seasonal calendar
Wealth groups,
How different households live i.e. gendered intra-household analysis of access tofood, cash income, expenditure and other basic services;
Prevalent present day and predicted shocks and changes;
Potential coping strategies and problems specification.
Indicator baseline values for impact indicators and documentation of how the thresholds should be computed in subsequent years.

7. CONSULTANCY PERIOD

The consultancy will be for 40 days including field data collection as well as travel days and Report write-up.

8. QUALIFICATION PROFILE

This assignment is expected to be accomplished by a team of consultants. One of the consultants should be designated as the team leader and would be the lead contact person on behalf of the team,

Qualifications of the team leader

Graduate degree in planning, food security and livelihoods, monitoring and assessment,economics or social sciences and other areas relevant for the assignment.

At least 10 years of relevant professional work in undertaking HEA with specific reference toutilization of Household Economy Analytical framework in undertaking community profiling inan insecure environment context.

Experience working and collaborating with diverse sets of stakeholders, such as local NGOs,government officials, donor representatives, local and international staff.

Thorough knowledge and understanding of social protection programming approaches and itslinkages.

Extensive experience in working with INGOs and local NGOs, local authorities and beneficiaries.

Demonstrated analytical and writing skills.

Previous work experience in Zambia.

9. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

All documentation related to the assignment shall remain the sole and exclusive property of the CFU

10. APPLICATION PROCESS

Interested consultants (in teams with a designated Team leader) should submit: Letter of interest, technical proposal, and financial offer no later than 30th of August 2016. Submissions may either be made electronically or physically.

If Phyically, please place them in the Tender Box at the CFU Offices, Plot 297a/9/10 Leopards Hill Rd, marked “CFU HEA 2017” and for the attention of the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager.

If electronically, please send to and also copy in .

The selection committeeconsisting of Project staff will review all applications. All applicants must meetthe minimum requirements described. The application must have one-page cover letter; technicalproposal and proposed comprehensive budget for the whole assignment. The application packageshould include the following:

A one-page application letter addressing:

The lead consultant’s previous experience and how it’s relevant to the proposedassignment.
The names, expertise, years of experience and relevance of team members inundertaking this assignment.

A comprehensive proposal showing the firms understanding of the Terms of reference.

The proposal should be broken down into assessment areas showing how each assessment sector is going to beundertaken.

Updated CVs for all consultants of the bidding team including relevant experience, number of daysrequired, specific roles, and qualifications.

Detailed comprehensive budget covering all assessment costs i.e. Total number of daysversus individual man-days, per diem, flight tickets, assessment training costs, transportation& accommodation costs; etc.

Samples of recently written reports on similar assignments.

(NB: It is not expected that the team has more than two consultants residing outside Zambia).

Preparation and submission of Tender

All tenders should be signed by an authorized person.
Prices quoted must clearly indicate VAT Exclusive and VAT Inclusive.
The applicable law shall be the Zambian law.
This request for a Proposal shall not constitute a contract.
Only short listed applicants will be contacted.
Applicants after the deadline will be excluded.
Applications not conforming to the conditions will not be taken into account.
The bidder shall bear the costs associated with the preparation and submission of its bid, and CFU shall not be responsible or liable for those costs, regardless of the conduct outcome of the bidding process.
The bids, as well as the correspondence and documents relating to the bids exchanged by the bidder and the procuring entity, shall be written in English. Supporting documents and printed literature that are part of the quotations shall be English.

Conditions

The following procurement terms and conditions of CFU shall apply;

Prices quoted by the Bidder shall be fixed during the bidders performance of the contract and not subject to variation on any account. A bid submitted with an adjustable price quotation shall be treated as non-responsive and shall be rejected.
Delivery within 40 days of Contract Start.
The bids should be supported by copies of the valid tax clearance certificate from the Zambia revenue authority (ZRA), certificate of incorporation from patents and company registration authority (PACRA) – if applicable.

Evaluation and Comparison of Bids

Information relating to the evaluation, examination, comparison and post qualification of bids and recommendation of contract award, shall not disclosed to bidders or any other persons not officially concerned with such process until information on contract award is communicated to all bidders.

Any effort by the bidder to influence the procuring entity in the examination, evaluation, comparison and post qualification of the bids or contract award decisions may result in the rejection of its bids.

From the time of the bid opening to the time of contract award, if any bidder wishes to contact the procuring entity on any matter related to the bidding process, it should do so in writing.

To assist in the examination, evaluation, comparison and post qualification of the bids, the procuring entity may, at its discretion ask the bidder for the clarification of its bid. Any clarification submitted by a bidder in respect to its bid and that is not in response to a request by the procuring entity shall not be considered. The procuring entity’s request for clarification and the response shall be in writing. No change in the prices or substance of the bid shall be sought, offered or permitted, except to confirm the correction of arithmetic errors discovered by the procuring entity in the evaluation of the bids.

Responsiveness of Bids

A substantially responsive bid is one that conforms to all the terms, conditions and specifications of the bidding documents.

The procuring entity shall award the contract to the bidder whose offer has been determined to be the best evaluated bid and is substantially responsive to the bidding documents, provided further that the bidder is determined to be qualified to perform the contract satisfactory.

Promptly after notification, the CFU shall send the successful bidder an official order.

The activities of the Conservation Farming Unit are supported in the main by generous funding from the British People. These funds allow the CFU to reach over 200,000 farmers in Zambia each year, providing them with practical training on Conservation Farming and Climate Smart Agriculture, enabling them to improve their farming incomes, lives and futures.