Job Description
Job Description
This Terms of Reference (TOR) describes the plans, objectives, deliverables, and expectations of We Effect and its partners for the 2025 - 2028 Supplementary baseline of the Southern African Food and Economic Empowerment Programme (SAFEE), across the implementing countries of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Organisation Background
We Effect is a Swedish international development organisation with aa area office in Southern Africa and country offices in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It supports development powered by people who themselves live in poverty and works with local organisations. We Effect’s vision is a sustainable and just world free of poverty. To succeed, it must start by changing the situation for the most vulnerable – women and youth, who constitute 70% of those living in poverty.
We Effect in Southern Africa believes that the most effective and sustainable approach to addressing the root causes of poverty is by taking a holistic and multi-levelled gender transformative approach. This means together with our different partner organizations, we will work at different levels to contribute to the overall programme: at personal, social, material, organizational and structural levels. We Effect has global and regional strategies, whose focus is being Stronger Together and prescribes gender equality as the core of all We Effect work.
We work in the thematic fields of sustainable rural development and adequate housing. We apply a human rights-based approach in our programmes, assisting people living in poverty to secure their rights and entitlement to adequate living conditions and broad empowerment. We Effect targets women in partner organisations to secure them the same rights and entitlements as men, especially to own and control land and access to financial resources. Partner organizations include farmer organizations, housing cooperatives, and savings and credit associations. The core strategy is to strengthen cooperatives of women and men living in poverty through membership-based democracy, long-term economic thinking, social responsibility, and transparency.
We Effect is inviting consultancy companies or individual consultants to undertake a hybrid evaluation survey for the Southern African Food and Economic Empowerment Programme (SAFEE) project as implemented in four southern Africa countries. The evaluation will assess the current state of the project outcomes situation, drawing from baseline data from a predecessor programme and establish benchmark indicators that will inform the Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Accountability (MEAL) plan. The consultant(s) will work closely with We Effect Project team at country level and assigned advisors, the project partners and relevant stakeholders.
The Project
Southern African Food and Economic Empowerment Programme (SAFEE).
The Southern Africa Food and and Economic Empowerment Programme will be implemented in four countries in Southern Africa: Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The programme will focus on strengthening civil society to advance the right to food, women’s economic empowerment, strengthened economic and climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods for their members and communities. There are 20 partner organisations at country level . The partner portfolio includes farmers’ organisations, women’s rights organisations, cooperatives and member-based organisations.
Programme objective and expected outcomes
The objective of the SAFEE programme is strong, inclusive, and democratic cooperatives, member-based organisations and other civil society organisations contribute to the right to food, women’s economic empowerment and strengthened economic and environmental resilience and sustainable livelihoods for their members and communities. The programme focuses on sustainable rural development, building on and consolidating the achievements and lessons from previous initiatives. It emphasizes organizational development, business and production development, gender equality, and civil society strengthening, while introducing components that address economic empowerment through market-driven solutions.
Strengthened Cooperatives/Civil Society: Under this result area the programme will work in three areas: (1) Support and strengthen the capacity of organisations within civil society including member-based organisations, cooperatives, farmer-based organisations and women’s rights organisations to mobilise and deliver equitable and just demand driven and member-owned services (2) Lobby for an enabling environment that promotes dialogue and collaboration between civil society and other actors in the agriculture sector (3) Strengthen governance structures and financial systems to enable partner organisations to build financial stability and sustainability. Organisations will be capacitated to become more democratic, transparent and contribute to more accountability in the civil society space more broadly. Organisations will be supported to organise around gender equality, human rights and democracy. By enhancing capacity, inclusion, and participation, these organisations will be able to play a crucial role in advancing the right to food, fostering sustainable livelihoods, and driving local economic development. We Effect will support the financial sustainability of the partner organisations and increase their capacity mobilise resources, diversify income sources and invest in the financial long-term security of their organisations. Additionally, member-based organisations can support members to develop business models for regional and global markets.
Gender Equality and Women’s Rights: Gender equality is both a cross-cutting area and a standalone result area, which reflects how significant it is within this programme. Under this area the focus will be on supporting women’s rights organisations, women-led cooperatives, women’s spaces and platforms promoting women’s voice and agency. This result area will focus on strengthening work that is specifically supporting women’s economic empowerment - including access productive resources and assets such as land, financial sources and services, technology and information at household, community and national levels for women of all backgrounds. By enhancing access to markets, livelihood opportunities, and financial inclusion, the programme will further empower women economically. Women’s rights to ownership, inheritance, and land tenure will be supported to ensure their equitable participation in economic activities. Additionally, the program will contribute to the mobilisation and collective action of women at local, national, regional and global levels; strengthened services and support to address gender-based violence, and promotion of policy reforms that affirms women’s rights and strengthening women’s rights organisations work on the right to food.
Resilience, healthy environment, and climate: Under this Result Area the programme will enhance small-holder farmers and rural communities’ resilience to climate shocks and stresses through access to knowledge and training on sustainable agricultural practices that promote environmental and economic stability.
The programme will strengthen climate adaptation efforts in agriculture and promote women’s leadership and agency in addressing climate-related challenges. Civil society organisations will be supported to advocate effectively for inclusive and sustainable climate policies, while efforts will focus on promoting sustainable agricultural and land management practices that enhance resilience and environmental sustainability.
Sustainable Livelihoods: The programme will contribute to improving livelihoods, job creation and fair incomes for farmers and thus promoting economic development and enhancing economic, climatic and social resilience. Under this result area the programme will focus on increased and more equal and equitable access to financial services for investment in agribusiness increased diversification of sources of income for women, improved and more equitable and equal access to and benefit from agricultural extension services, technical and advisory support, and agro inputs. The programme will also promoting value chains and regional trade through facilitating market linkages.
Effective, equitable & just food systems: Under this result area, the programme will drive food systems transformation by promoting nature-based approaches across value chains and services, ensuring food entitlements, and advocating for the ratification of the right to food in national constitutions. This will be achieved through sustainable production, climate-smart agriculture, resilient seed systems that balance biodiversity with productivity, agroecology, agroforestry, and Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (SALM). Advocacy efforts will focus on fostering socially and culturally acceptable, environmentally sustainable food systems while promoting organic and agroecological practices and pushing for loss and damage compensation to address climate-related food system vulnerabilities.
Duties and Responsibilities
Geographical coverage
This is a regional/multi-country project which covers Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia. Project interventions are implemented at regional, country/ national, provincial, district and community level. It operates in Malawi. In Zimbabwe the project operates in Masvingo Province Chiredzi District, Harare Province Budiriro, Bulawayo, Matobo and Umguza, Midlands Gweru Rural District, Manicaland Province Buhera District and Mat South Insiza District. In Mozambique the project operates in to be completed. In Zambia to be completed. The baseline will be conducted in the following specified areas:
Country
Selected areas for baseline
Zimbabwe
Bulawayo Urban/Matobo, Chiredzi, Gwanda/Buhera, Insiza, Budiriro Districts add ZFU sites
The Intended results of the project
The overall objective of the project is that The food security of rightsholder households in Southern Africa are improved through multisectoral partnerships fostering sustainability and resilience.
The project specific objectives are:
Programme Objective:
Strong, inclusive, and democratic cooperatives, member-based organisations and other civil society organisations contribute to the right to food, strengthened resilience, women’s economic empowerment and sustainable livelihoods for their members and communities.
Result Area 1: Strengthening of Civil Society Partner Organisations /stronger organisations Outcome 1.1: Strengthened capacity of civil society (partners) to deliver demand driven, equal, equitable, environmentally sustainable and just member services Outcome 1.2: Enabling and conducive environment that promotes cooperatives and civil society organisations to operate effectively, freely and without fear.
Result Area 2: Gender Equality and Women’s Rights Outcome 2.1: Increased mobilization and collective action of women at local, national, regional levels to lead transformational change. Outcome 2.2: The enabling environment affirms zero tolerance for GBV and enables women’s economic empowerment
Result Area 3: Resilience, healthy environment, and climate Outcome 3.1: Strengthen women’s role and agency in work on climate change Outcome 3.2: The enabling environment is strengthened to promote the role of civil society to safely and effectively lobby at local, national and regional levels to address climate injustice
Result Area 4: Sustainable livelihoods Outcome 4.1: Smallholder farmers have increased access to relevant information, resources and inputs to promote positive changes in farming practices. Outcome 4.2: The enabling environment is strengthened to promote more equal and equitable access to financial services, business development services and capital that contribute to sustainable livelihoods
Result Area 5: Food system Outcome 5.1: Women affirm their land and water rights Outcome 5.2: Improved and more equitable and equal value chains (production, aggregation, processing and distribution) at local, national and global levels
The Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to conduct a supplementary baseline (hereafter referred to as the baseline) at country level, which is focused on the SAFEE project as it sets up for full implementation rollout. We Effect expects the identified entities to work closely with COs and their respective POs to conduct the assignment. This will entail key considerations in activities such as data collection, analysis, validation and reporting. The baseline for the project indicators will assess the status for already established indicators through updating, set measurements for new or non-measured indicators and provide COs and POs with all relevant results information. This will serve as the benchmark for establishing baseline values. The assignment is expected to identify areas for policy influence around the project thematic areas. Finally, the consultant will be expected to contribute two days to supporting the consolidation of the baseline at regional level.
The assessment is designed to meet the project objectives (high level results); and the theory of change (ToC) approach which will entail careful analysis of the expected intended outcomes, outputs, strategies and activities, and the contextual factors and their expected contribution/attribution to achieve the desired outcomes. Data is expected to be collected through secondary, primary and tertiary sources. This will include desk review, individual key informant interviews with key stakeholders, such as partner organisations, representative of agencies, government boards, line ministries both at regional, national and district level, farmer organizations, implementing project partners, community leaders, private companies and other service providers, management and project staff and focus group discussions with community members, rightsholders and indirect beneficiaries (boys, girls, men, & women). The consultant will be guided by the implementing organisation on the communities to be included.
The partners (Self Help Development Foundation (SHDF), Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Organisation (BVTO), Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), Community Water Action (CWA, Emthonjeni Women’s Forum (EWF) Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe (LCDZ), will work as a coalition at country level The partners will identify a lead organisation to recruit and contract the consultant. We Effect will liase with the lead organisation and offer technical support for the following: :
- Develop a workplan for conducting the entire assessment including the components that form part of the assignment across each country implementing the SAFEE
- Recruit and contract consultant
- Manage the contract with the consultant
- Start phase indicator benchmarking
- Ensure all data is entered and analyzed through SPSS and Nvivo packages.
- Oversee the quality, efficacy, and integrity of all raw data (that will need to be made available to We Effect) is maintained throughout the process.
The coalition of partners will be expected to:
- In collaboration with We Effect develop and improve adequate data collection tools and ensuring the integration of the ESIA and gender tools.
- Manage and coordinate all key activities (data collection, cleaning, analysis, validation and reporting)
- Mobilise individuals and groups for interviews and FGDs
- Quality assure all the data being uploaded to the online system
- Validate and quality assure the final report
The consultant will be expected to:
• Develop a workplan for the baseline process
• Collaborate with all members of the coalition to arrange logistics, mobilisation of community members and training of enumerators
• Ensure all research assistants and enumerators are sufficiently well trained in tools and able to collect the data ethically and robustly.
• Conduct the data collection
• Quality assure the raw data collected by the enumerators and research assistants
• Collate all the data into the online system
• Produce a final detailed baseline report with guidelines on product development to be shared at inception XXXXXXX
We Effect is expected to:
• Support the design, testing and finalisation of the data collection tools
• Support the uploading of tools into the Solstice system
• Provide ongoing technical support
• QA the final report and provide feedback
• Avail a MEAL team to assist partners.
• Provide necessary background information of the proposed project.
The baseline is expected to achieve the following:
- To establish the status of the project outcomes (both qualitative and quantitative) and output indicators as outlined in the project’s sub logical framework, as well as establish the contextual environment prior to implementation rollout of the anticipated second phase.
- Attain the measurements for the start phase project indicators.
- Ascertain the efficacy of the current Theory of Change.
- Ascertain the relevance and sustainability of the set objectives; and
- Make recommendations to We Effect based on the findings and provide information that will assist in guiding project implementation and a proposed plan of action.
- Updating and/or conducting ESIAs and action plans for all partner organisations (to be discussed in line with resources and possible updating)
1.2 Stakeholders and Audience
The stakeholders for the study include:
• Community leaders and project rightsholders
• Project partners across the four COs
• Relevant Government line ministries and key stakeholders.
The audience for this study include:
• SIDA
• We Effect staff
• Partner organisations across the region
• Relevant government ministries
2. STUDY DESIGN
2.1 Study Objectives
The baseline study seeks to:
• Establish the start of phase values for all outcome indicators requiring data collection outside of regular project activities, as identified in the M&E Plan and results framework.
• Assess, using statistical tests of comparison and qualitative reasoning, the measured values and observed conditions and practices.
• The data will be used to validate the project assumptions (testing the Theory of change)
Qualifications and Experience
Requirements:
• Proven experience of over 5 years in baseline surveys/evaluations
• Strong expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Degree / Masters background in agriculture, rural development, or value chain programming
• Experience in Zimbabwe or similar contexts is an added advantage
Duration: 10 days
Location: Zimbabwe