Re-Advertised Cowpea Processing Equipment Consultant at Mercy Corps

Project Location(s):

Re-Advertised Cowpea Processing Equipment Consultant (Consultant for assessment of women owned cowpea agro-processors value chain)

Abuja

Background:

The Rural Resilience Activity is a five-year, $45 million USAID-funded Program in Nigeria’s northeast. The purpose of the Rural Resilience Activity is to sustainably move people out of chronic vulnerability and poverty. The Rural Resilience activity will enable individuals and communities to engage in strong and sustainable market systems rather than continuing to rely on humanitarian assistance and faltering with each new shock. To achieve this purpose, the Activity will have four components and four cross cutting elements:

Component 1: Provide up-to-date evidence for selection of market systems, livelihoods and employment opportunities that contribute to inclusive and resilient growth and improved nutrition.
Component 2: Stimulate market systems growth and diverse economic opportunities (Pull activities).
Component 3: Build capacity to take advantage of market systems opportunities (Push activities).
Component 4: Sequencing, layering, integrating (SLI), and collaborative learning to improve activity effectiveness, sustainability, and scale.
Component 5: Supporting Market Resilience to COVID-19 Shocks.
Purpose / Project Description:

To help market actors withstand the shocks and stresses presented by COVID-19, Mercy Corps plans to deliver cash transfers to 50,000 individuals (45,000 farmers and 5,000 microenterprises). Working in the Feed the Future (FtF) portfolio states of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Kebbi, Niger, Benue, and Ebonyi, and FCT over a period of 10 months, Mercy Corps will synchronize with the harvest cycle to ensure that agricultural collectives, microenterprises, small holder farmers, women cowpea processors, and lead firms have targeted support to survive, rebuild, and recover from the economic impact of this complex crisis. Mercy Corps’ approach specifically targets 50,000 individuals, of which at least 50% will be women and youth, and 90 agribusinesses/agro-processors, to ensure that recovery efforts are inclusive of society’s most marginalized groups. Drawing upon Mercy Corps’ global expertise and existing capacity under the Feed the Future Nigeria’s Rural Resilience Activity, Mercy Corps will rapidly expand support services to mitigate the economic, agricultural, and food security impacts of COVID-19. These urgent efforts to direct money towards smallholder farmers, microenterprises, and agro-processors aims to counteract the most severe COVID-19 impact and enable these actors to survive the upcoming harvest season.
Consultant Objectives:

Optional – narrative or bulleted

The objective of this assignment is to assist the Rural Resilience Activity Covid-19 mitigation team to identify opportunities to support women processors operating within the cowpea and other value chains in North East Nigeria to improve their operations, recover from the effect of COVD-19 pandemic and/or improve their resilience. The consultant will also lead the identification of the appropriate equipment that can be deployed to support such women processors at either post-harvest or value addition levels, credible sources of such equipment as well as develop operational guideline for providing the equipment support to the women processors.

Consultant Activities:

The Consultant will:

• Carry out a desk review of literature available on women participation in the cowpea value chain particularly at both post-harvest and value addition processing levels with a view to identifying their main processing constraints
• Conduct selected Key Informants Interview (KII) to complement the information gathered from the desk review above with the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on women cowpea processors
• Identify relevant equipment that can help the women cowpea processors recover from the effect of COVID-19, resume growth as well as build their resilience
• Identify and screen equipment fabricators/sources with a view to selecting providers to be engaged in delivering the equipment support
• Develop a report that outlines the main findings from the activities above and a guideline for effective implementation of the support.

Consultant Deliverables:

The Consultant will provide the following:

A detailed report describing the challenges faced by women processors of cowpeas (and or other Rural Resilience Activity target value chains) and the opportunities to improve their operations through equipment support

A detailed list of equipment that can be provided to support the women processors, identified sources of each equipment and the values that can be achieved by the processors by deploying each equipment

A detailed guideline on how to implement the equipment support intervention.

Timeframe / Schedule: 

10 working days within October 2021

The Consultant will report to:

Tafirenyika A. Mupfanochiya; Cash Assistance Programme Director –RRA, MERCY CORPS-NIGERIA

The Consultant will work closely with:

The Cash Assistance Program Director, the  RRA Programs Gender Advisor, and the program teams.

Required Experience & Skills:

Mercy Corps standard is 5-10 years of relevant experience for consultants

Evaluation Criteria

Score

Tax Identification number and/or Tax certification

10%

Experience in similar contracts evidenced by references, and/or appreciation letters and any other documents from other organizations you have worked for

20%

Samples/evidence of similar events planned previously – Picture samples can be an alternative to some samples due to the size of the item/asset

30%

Detailed work plan to execute the work including timeline for set up and dry run

40%

Total

100%

• Hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Post-Harvest Technology, Food Processing or closely related areas. Master’s degree in one of these areas is highly desirable.
• Have at least 5 years’ work experience in the design and development of business models that support processing enterprises, with extensive experience in small to medium scale food processing operations and management.
• Past experience working with small to medium scale post-harvest and value addition businesses is particularly desirable.
• Experience in working with fabricators and suppliers of small-medium processing equipment for post-harvest and/or value addition operations 
• Knowledge of national and international agricultural processing quality standards is required.
• Both spoken and written fluency in the English language.
• Have excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
• Portfolio of similar works completed.